


Surface Tension

by wallmakerrelict



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Anachronistic, BDSM Scene, Biology Inaccuracies, Boats and Ships, Dom/sub, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Slow Burn, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 12:02:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 58,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallmakerrelict/pseuds/wallmakerrelict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the son of the (late) famous pirate John Winchester, Dean has inherited a dangerous reputation, insurmountable debts, and a sailing ship called The Impala. Desperate to keep his ship, and to keep his brother out of the family business, Dean has been smuggling for John's old contacts for most of his adult life. He has struck a delicate balance between duty and debauchery, running jobs with the fate of his crew on his shoulders while simultaneously maintaining lovers in every port from the Carolinas to South America. But just when his balancing act begins to crash down around him, he meets one of the elusive creatures living in the water off the Atlantic Coast. Half human, half sea creature, these beings don't enjoy human attention. It's only through a series of happenstances that Dean finds himself inextricably bound to the young merman named Castiel at a time when both their lives are poised to change forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Everything in this fic was born of [Rae's](http://weatherers.tumblr.com/) tumblr posts and conversations with anons. I don't have the tenacity to link credit back to every post, but suffice to say if you think I had a good idea in this fic it probably came from her.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean arrives in Stanford to see Sam and his fiancee, Jess. But old debts catch up with him and cut his visit short. Crowley is out for Dean's blood, and he might get it, except for the fact that there is someone in the water watching over Dean.

They sailed up the North Carolina coast under cover of darkness. There wasn't much risk of being recognized here, off these sleepy little coastal towns, but The Impala's lean design and dark coloring were distinctive enough that they didn't dare take the risk of making berth in daylight. 

Dean Winchester stood at the wheel, steering with one hand. His relaxed, unconcerned posture was a practiced lie – his eyes constantly darted between the shore and the sea and across the deck of his ship. As they slid past the dim lights on the shore of the little town of Stanford, Dean's nervousness broke through and he began drumming his fingers on the spokes. 

"Almost there." The voice behind him was reassuring, as if talking to a child. 

Dean turned in time to see the figure of his first mate step out of the shadows. Even in the dark, her hair was scorchingly red. "I know, Anna." 

"Calm down." 

"I _am_ calm." 

Anna stepped up to the wheel and closed her hand around Dean's fingers, stilling them. "There's nothing you can do about it now. Try to enjoy being home."

"Stanford isn't home," Dean was quick to say. 

"Close enough." When Dean resumed drumming on the wheel, she added, "You think you're hiding your feelings, but you're not. Even if the crew doesn't notice, they feel it. Your fear affects them. It makes us all weak." 

Dean stopped drumming and gripped the wheel. "This could be it for us, Anna."

"I know."

"We were always hanging by a thread, and now that we fucked up this job..."

She laid her hand on his shoulder. "Dean, I know."

She squeezed his shoulder rhythmically, calmingly, as he steered the Impala past Stanford, up the shoreline a few more miles, and into a little cove. After the splash of the anchor and the rattle of the chain playing out, the creaking of the rigging was the only sound to be heard. No lights on the shore. No movement from the horizon, which was just beginning to glow pink. They'd made it. Dean allowed himself a deep breath. 

Once on shore, they went their separate ways. Even though they were a small crew, it would have been suspicious for them all to turn up in town at once. Some, like Dean, were heading for Stanford. Some planned to make the somewhat longer journey to the bigger town – almost a city – up the coast where there was more to do and see. They knew to return to the ship when it was time to cast off again. 

Anna lingered as Dean prepared to leave. She never went to Stanford, but the rest of the crew reported that she was never seen in the city either. Dean wasn't sure where she went, and he didn't ask. "Talk to Sam," she advised. 

"Why do you think I'm here?"

"No," she said, staring him down until he dropped his eyes. "Really talk to him."

"Fine," he said, not sure yet whether or not he was lying. 

It wasn't a long walk to Stanford from the hidden cove, but for much of the journey there were no roads. Dean eventually found a trail, which turned into a path, which turned into the dirt road that led into Stanford. By the time he passed the first buildings on his way into town, the sun was above the horizon. 

No one recognized him there. Or if they did, they recognized him as Sam Campbell's vagabond brother, who breezed into town a handful of times per year and then breezed back out again. They nodded at him as he passed. He nodded back, resisting the urge to pull his hat low to hide his face. 

He spotted Sam before Sam spotted him. Sam was just stepping out of what passed for a house – a small single room attached to the back of a shop – and into the orangey light of the sunrise. No matter how many years passed, he still looked like the serious-faced kid who once sat on the deck of The Impala with sailors flowing around him, like a rock in a river, determinedly jamming his toy soldiers into the gaps in the planks. Except taller. And with longer hair. And with an air of belonging to a place that Dean never saw in him as a kid, and that he had long since given up on for himself. 

Sam fit so seamlessly into that quiet, small-town morning that Dean almost hesitated to call out to him, to walk back into his life like the dark reminder that he knew he was. As long as Dean wasn't around, Sam could be the happy man that Dean saw standing there in the sun. The moment Dean made himself known, Sam would once again become the son of John Winchester, the notorious pirate. 

While he was still standing there with his mouth hanging open, mustering up the nerve to speak, Sam noticed him. "Dean!" he called out, his face splitting into a smile. He walked toward his brother, his hands rising ahead of him, and Dean stepped forward into his arms. 

"Been a while," Dean choked out, his voice going low and gruff to hide the emotion being squeezed out of him. 

"I wasn't worried. You always come back."

Dean pulled away and studied Sam's face. "You were worried," he said with a smug grin. 

"I was so fucking worried," Sam admitted. "You usually at least send letters."

"Yeah, sorry. I had a bit of trouble." 

"What kind?" 

Dean opened and closed his mouth like a fish as Anna's words flashed into his mind, but he finally shrugged and said, "Nothing I couldn't handle."

"Right." Sam narrowed his eyes suspiciously for a second, but only for a second before he let the subject drop. "Come on in and say hi to Jess." 

As they passed through Sam's little one-room annex and in through the back door of the shop, Dean chuckled, "She hasn't dumped your ass yet? When are you gonna grow a pair and propose to her?" 

"Well, um..."

As soon as they crossed the storeroom and came out behind the sales counter, the round-faced blonde beauty at the cash drawer turned, saw them, and let out a triumphant shout. "Dean!" Jess launched herself at him, latched her tiny, strong hands onto his arm, and dragged him the rest of the way into the shop. "You're back! How long are you staying?"

"Not very..." Then he took another look at her beaming, wild-eyed face and amended himself to, "I think I might be staying however long you say I'm staying."

"Good answer," said Jess. "Because your brother has refused to marry me unless you're there to give him away." 

Dean turned very slowly back to where Sam was standing in the doorway and looking sheepish. "You want me to _give you away?_ "

"I just want you to be there, okay?" Sam sighed. "I proposed right after the last time you left. I didn't think you'd be gone so long." He turned to Jess with a baffled grin. "Or that _you'd_ be so impatient."

"Well, what do you expect?" said Jess. "I want a piece of that ass!"

"Atta girl!" Dean cackled as Sam turned a unique shade of red. 

Then Jess took a closer look at Dean and sighed, her shoulders slumping and her smile drooping. "You're not staying, are you?" 

"Sorry, kids," said Dean. "I've got a few loose ends to tie up. Shouldn't take long. A week, maybe." 

"And _then_ you'll come to our wedding?" said Jess. 

"Wouldn't miss it." This time Dean truly didn't intend to make a liar of himself. He just hoped circumstance wouldn't do the job for him. 

"At least stay for the day. You can have dinner with me and Jess's family," said Sam. 

"Wouldn't miss that either." 

Dean was expecting to get a day of rest, but as soon as the store started getting customers Jess put him right to work fetching things from the storeroom for her. He put up some token grumbling, but he had to smile whenever she thanked him in that bubbly voice of hers. And spending time in the storefront meant he had a good view of Sam as he worked. 

Sam had left The Impala when he was sixteen – far too old to begin an apprenticeship. But he hadn't let that consign him to a life of menial labor or military service. Instead, he'd taken what he'd learned from growing up on a pirate ship and turned it into a marketable skill. From his table at the rear of the shop, he took damaged pistols, rifles, and nautical equipment to be repaired. 

"You always hated fixing our gear for us," Dean remarked quietly. 

"Yeah, but I'm good at it," said Sam with a shrug and a smile.

Jess leaned over the counter and called over to Dean, "Sam does more than patch up firearms and compasses. He's been helping the townsfolk draw up legal documents."

"That right?" said Dean, swelling with pride. Back when they were children, Sam and Dean had scurried about underfoot, snatching loot of their own from each of the ships John had conquered. For Dean, that had been sweets and adventure novels. For Sam, it had been a stack of volumes on British and colonial law. While Dean had learned to read from Don Quixote while sharing his dried fruit and molasses candy with Sam, Sam had devoured the textbooks that took up most of the space in his tiny corner of the barracks. 

"Nothing fancy," Sam mumbled. But he smiled anyway when Dean thumped him on the back and told him that he was proud of him. 

Dinner that evening was the usual awkward affair, with Jess's parents asking ever-more-pointed questions about what Dean did during all those months he spent at sea and Dean becoming more and more belligerent each time he had to dodge them. Finally he crammed the rest of his food into his mouth and excused himself. As he slipped out the door, he could barely hear Jess's father saying to her, "Sam is such a smart, well-mannered young man. It's hard to believe the two of them are related." 

Sam followed Dean out and spun him around by his shoulder before he could find an alley to disappear into. "Don't leave like this," he begged. "Let me talk to them."

"No use, Sammy," Dean sighed. "I just don't fit in here."

"You could. Come on, Dean, you can't live like this forever. You could do like I did – give up the sailing, settle down. Meet someone."

But Dean was already shaking his head. "I was twelve the first time I saw a poster with my name and a price on it," he said. "This kind of life – your kind of life – it was never in the cards for me. And if I stay, I'll just mess it up for you too."

"No one knows who we are here."

"No one knows who _you_ are here. It wouldn't take long for people to start getting suspicious about me, especially if they caught a glimpse of Baby."

Sam gave a frustrated grunt and ran his fingers through his hair. "You could sell The Impala," he tossed out as a last-ditch, hopeless effort. 

"I am never going to sell The Impala," said Dean, his eyes flashing murderously. 

A long pause, and then they both looked at the ground. Even though he had technically won the argument, as he always did, Dean felt as defeated as Sam looked. 

"You leaving then?" said Sam. 

"I'll be back soon."

Sam's lips twitched into a halfhearted smile. "You'd better be, or Jess will kill you for delaying her wedding again." Then, "Hey, Dean. Those loose ends you're tying up wouldn't have anything to do with the bit of trouble you ran into, would it?" 

Damn. And Dean thought he had been so smooth. "I..." he croaked before trailing off into nervous laughter. And for a second, he contemplated telling Sam everything. To share that burden. With Sam. Sam, who was happy. Who was safe. Who was getting married. 

"I've got it under control." He said it so confidently that he almost convinced himself. 

Sam pressed his lips together, but he nodded and said, "Okay. Come here." He grabbed Dean by the shoulder and pulled him into an embrace. "Be safe."

"I'm the safest person you know," said Dean. He pounded Sam on the back a couple of times before letting go.

It was a long walk back to the ship. He arrived just as the sun was sagging against the horizon. He was the first of his crew to return to the little cove. 

But he was not alone. 

When he went to climb onto the deck of the ship from the dinghy, a hand appeared in front of his face, its fingers crooked invitingly. Dean's eyes followed the slope of the arm up to the face looming over him. "Hello, my boy."

Dean's heart dropped into his stomach, but he took the hand anyway. "Hey, Crowley," he said as he was pulled up onto the deck. He glanced around the perimeter of the cove. There, hidden in the shadow of the shoreline, was the familiar outline of the Crossroad Deal – Crowley's ship. Dean could have punched himself in the face for missing it. 

Crowley stood in the middle of the deck, his arms crossed and his feet planted wide as if he owned the place, his suit somehow still impeccable after a sea journey. Three of his men stood behind him, and crashing sounds from below decks suggested that there were more just out of sight. Dean felt the railing at his back. It was already far too late to run. 

A trapdoor slammed open, and a woman crawled out. She went straight to Crowley and whispered something in his ear. At a nod from him, she stepped behind him to join his crowd of backup. As if Dean weren't already outnumbered. 

"How much money do you owe me, Dean?" said Crowley as he began to pace slowly back and forth. "No, don’t answer that. I know you have trouble with big numbers. What I can't understand is how, after all the chances I've given you to get out of the truly tragic money-hole your father dug you into before he died, you still manage to cock up even the simplest milk runs I send you on." 

"I can explain..." 

"I'M NOT FINISHED SPEAKING." 

Dean managed not to flinch, but every muscle in his body was coiled as tightly as a spring. Slowly, his hands swung back until they found the edge of the railing, and he squeezed so hard that he felt his fingernails leave tiny indentations in the wood. He shut his mouth. 

"That's better," said Crowley, as if he had never raised his voice. "Now, not only does my assistant here tell me that you don't even have half of the cargo I sent you to retrieve, but I had to follow you all the way to Stanford to discover this fact. I can deal with incompetence. In fact, I have to as long as you work for me. But one thing I will not tolerate is a jumped-up captain who scrapes by on his daddy's reputation STEALING MY CARGO AND FUCKING OFF UP THE COAST WITH IT."

There was a long, terrible pause, but Dean didn't dare speak until Crowley spread his arms and raised his eyebrows, making it clear that he was waiting for an answer. "There was a Navy ship waiting for us when we left the drop point," Dean said. "We couldn't have outrun them if we hadn't dumped some of the cargo."

"So the merchandise I bought and paid for is lying at the bottom of the Caribbean somewhere." Crowley rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "Excellent. Now do you care to explain why I had to chase you down and corner you in order to learn this very basic information?"

"I was on my way to you."

"You sailed right past me."

"I haven't seen my brother in months, okay? I came here first. So shoot me."

Dean didn't even have time to regret his poor choice of words before Crowley drew a flintlock pistol from his belt and pointed it at Dean's head. "That can be arranged."

And oddly enough, Dean's hands unclenched and his limbs relaxed. Somehow, the open threat of violence was easier for him than the tense, interminable standoff. He had had pistols pointed at him loads of times. At least with a pistol pointed at him, he knew where he stood. He even managed a cocky smile as he replied, "Come on, Crowley. How are you gonna recoup your losses if you shoot me, huh?"

Crowley laughed as he sauntered up close to wave the pistol in Dean's face. "Oh this? I'm not going to shoot you. The sound might attract all kinds of unwanted attention. And as for my losses, well, I figure your ship will about cover that when I sell her at auction next week."

Dean's throat closed up. Suddenly getting shot didn't seem like such a bad prospect, comparatively. 

"She's too recognizable for anyone to want to sail her as-is," Crowley went on, his smug grin growing as he watched Dean's face sink. "But a nice paint job might give her a new lease on life. Some retrofitting, maybe. Or the buyer might just want to break her down for parts. It doesn't matter much to me."

In retrospect, taking a swing at Crowley was a poor decision. But Dean's fist was already flying, and there was nothing he could do to call it back. It might have almost been worth it if he had connected, but Crowley ducked it easily and came back up with an expression so tranquil that Dean knew immediately that he was in the worst kind of trouble. 

He didn't see the butt of the pistol before it thudded into his temple. All he saw was how the world seemed to shimmer and pitch as an overwhelming pain blossomed in his head. He didn't feel himself staggering backwards, but he felt the railing as he tumbled over it. He saw the sky, the sunset turned upside-down and mottled as darkness crept into his vision like spider webs. Then he saw the water. 

Then he saw nothing, and all he felt was the cold.

\-----

Dean opened his eyes, and immediately regretted it. His skull seemed determined to redefine pain for him. He screwed his eyes back shut and tried to return to the dream he'd been having – about being cradled in a chilly, many-armed embrace and flying over sand and rock through air as thick as water while still acutely aware of the fact that he was a terrible brother who had gone and ruined Sam's wedding forever by getting himself killed. 

When the pain refused to go away, he gave up and opened his eyes again. The ceiling above him was low, uneven, and dimly lit in mottled blue. At first he thought his vision was still swimming from the concussion, because the light was dancing in flecks and waves. But then he heard the sound of gently-lapping water and realized that the light was reflecting off of the ripples. 

He tried to sit up, but stopped with a whimper. The slightest movement made his vision strobe and his head throb. So he felt around with his hands and moved his eyes without moving his head, trying to get his bearings. He could feel wet rock underneath him, and if he reached far enough to his right he could feel where the rock ended. He reached over the edge and dipped his fingers into cold water. The blue glow on the ceiling continued down the walls. It appeared to be some sort of moss or algae. The room was small, no wider than fifteen feet, and with no visible exit. 

A sea cave. It finally clicked. He was in a sea cave. A little pocket of breathable air trapped in a rocky cavern. Which meant he probably wasn't dead. Yay. Unless Hell was a sea cave, in which case: huh?

Eventually the chill of his wet clothes set him shivering, and he realized that he had better get moving if he didn't want to either freeze to death or suffocate in there – whichever happened to come first. Or maybe his head was already literally killing him. It sure felt like it, especially when he levered himself up into a sitting position with a groan. 

And then, as if this weren't surreal enough already, Dean glanced around and saw the naked body of a man lying on the rocks beside him. It took Dean several seconds to even process the fact that he was not alone in the cave. It took him several more seconds to confirm that he did not know this man – the lean, muscular body and messy black hair were unfamiliar to him. Several more seconds, and he managed to convince himself that the man was not knocked unconscious as Dean had been, but merely sleeping, his head resting on his folded arms and his back rising and falling rhythmically. 

So he had been staring for a good long while before he realized that only the man's upper body was safely on the rocks, and that the rest of him was hanging over the ledge into the water. The slightest movement could send him toppling in. 

Dean reached out and closed his hand around the man's wrist, trying to keep him from falling. At just that slight contact, the man's eyes fluttered open and he twisted and stretched himself awake. And as his limbs flexed, Dean was finally able to make out the outline of his body beneath the shining surface of the water. Not legs, but a twisting mass of ropy tendrils that fanned out behind him, pulsing gently. 

"Gshk!" Dean half-gasped, half-coughed, and let go of the man so suddenly that they both flinched, and the man slid backwards into the water with a splash. His head soon popped back above the surface. His lower body flapped like a jellyfish, keeping him afloat. Dean tried to focus on his face, but his eyes kept sliding back down to where his pelvis should have been, where his body split into many slender, tapering legs. An octopus. His dazed brain finally came up with the word. Octopus. 

"I didn't mean to frighten you," the man said in a voice much deeper and much, much more human than Dean had been expecting. 

"Where am I?" Dean demanded, his speech only slightly slurred. 

"In a sea cave."

Dean stared at the wall and took a deep breath. "Thanks a bunch," he said through gritted teeth. "Yeah, I figured that out. Why am I in a sea cave?" 

"I didn't think you wanted to re-surface right away, with the person who harmed you still in the cove. But I deduced that you might want to breathe some time before he left, so I brought you here." This was all said so matter-of-factly that Dean honestly couldn't tell if it was meant to be sarcastic. 

"Who are you?"

"I'm Castiel."

"No, I mean..." Dean tried to gesture discreetly to the man's lower half where his legs still waved just under the water, but he ended up making a sort of frustrated flailing motion. " _Who are you?_ "

Castiel squinted his eyes at Dean, regarding him very seriously. His shoulders shrunk down into the water, receding, almost as if he were embarrassed. "I should go," he muttered. In an instant he disappeared completely beneath the surface with a soft splash. 

"Wait, wait!" Dean called after him, leaning over the rocky ledge to peer into the water. "How am I supposed to get out of here?" But he saw nothing but rocks and shadow and the reflection of the ceiling's blue light. 

He waited. He couldn't be sure of how long, because time seemed suspended in that weirdly-lit underwater bubble, but he waited until the shock of meeting Castiel wore off and he started shivering again. 

He found a loose rock on his perch and dropped it into the water, but he soon lost sight of it as it fell, and it made no sound when it landed (if it landed). Besides, even if he knew how deep the cave was, there was no telling how long or treacherous the tunnel leading to the surface would be. Could he even make it alone? 

But the alternative was sitting in that cave, twiddling his thumbs and banking on the slim chance that Castiel would come back for him. So he eased himself into the water, took a deep breath, and let his head slip below the surface. 

The pressure on his head was excruciating, but he continued to drop down until he felt his feet hit rock. Then, by the remnants of the light from above, he found a narrow tunnel. Though his lungs were already burning, he kicked and clawed his way through. His head ached so badly that he wasn't sure if he would be able to make another attempt if he were to give up now. 

The tunnel was pitch-black for a few terrible yards. Then a light appeared up ahead. It was blue – not the cold blue of the cave, but the welcoming blue of morning sunlight filtered through shallow water. He burst out of the end of the tunnel and into the bright waters of the cove. Above him, he could see the sun through the glittering surface. 

But it was too far. Though he kicked and swam, he simply did not have the strength or the air to climb those last few yards to the sunlight above. The paddling of his arms slowed before his eyes as he weakened. Instead of getting closer, the surface began to slip away. He was sinking. 

There was a great crash as the glassy surface shattered, and the yellow light of the sun was replaced by a billowing flash of red. Strong, narrow fingers closed around his wrist and bit into his shoulder, and then he was being borne up, up, and finally breaking through into the air. He choked and gasped, barely aware that Anna was doggedly towing him toward shore. 

Once he was safe on the sand, Anna pounded him on his back until he spit up the last of the sea water he had been on the verge of inhaling. "That's it, Dean," she said. "You're okay. Just breathe. Deep breaths. Come on, you can do it."

She waited for him to catch his breath before asking, "What the hell happened to you?"

Dean's mouth tasted of salt. He worked up a gob of saliva and spat it out, but the taste remained. "Long story," he said hoarsely. 

"Where's the ship?"

And then, for the first time since he fell from the deck, Dean looked out over the cove. No Impala. No Crossroad Deal. There was not a ship to be seen. Crowley had made good on his word, and taken The Impala a prize. 

"Son of a bitch."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Anna track Crowley down and negotiate for The Impala. When they get back, Dean gets some startling news.

Anna was dabbing at the crusted blood on Dean's face when the first batch of his crew reappeared. There were three of them, and they came through the woods from the direction of the city. They were laughing and talking quietly amongst themselves until they saw Dean and Anna sitting on the sand, the empty cove behind them. 

"Where's the ship?" one of them asked. 

"I'm fine, thanks," Dean snapped. Then, to Anna, "OW!" 

Anna said, "You've got a nice black eye and a goose egg. And you almost certainly have a concussion. Okay, I've got most of the blood off. Do you want me to finish, or do you need a break?" 

"I don't need a break!" Dean grumped, and then immediately regretted it when Anna began scrubbing over his bruises again. 

Another crew member pushed through the trees and onto the beach. She blinked twice and immediately asked, "Where's the ship?" 

"Long story!" 

The crew stood together in a nervous huddle until the rest of them arrived. "Where's the ship?" the newcomers asked. 

"Would everyone stop asking me that?" Dean shouted. 

"Dean..." said Anna in a warning tone. 

Dean took a deep breath, turned, and explained what happened from when he returned to the ship to when he hit the water. He ended, "Crowley's probably got her halfway back to the Inferno by now." The Inferno was Crowley's base of operations – a sea port and smuggling center hidden in the inlets just a day's journey down the coast. 

While the crew rumbled discontentedly amongst themselves, Anna narrowed her eyes at Dean. "Where were you from when Crowley knocked you overboard to when I pulled you out?" 

"You'll never believe this, but..." He stopped mid-sentence, swallowed, and found that he didn't feel like sharing the memory of blue light reflecting off of rippling water reflecting off of wet, black hair. It belonged to him. Besides, it had been so surreal that he wasn't even sure if he could properly explain it to Anna. It would be like trying to tell someone about a dream. "But I swam into a sea cave and hid out until Crowley was gone."

Anna's eyebrows shot up. "Concussed, bleeding, and semi-conscious," she said slowly, "you found a sea cave and swam into it?"

Dean shrugged. "Amazing the things you can do when you think you're gonna die."

"Mm-hm," said Anna, shaking her head just a little. Then she stood and addressed the crew. "Listen up! The Captain's hurt. He needs to stay put for at least a week. When he's fit, we'll all find passage down to the Inferno on a ship out of Stanford and negotiate for The Impala."

"Yeah," said Dean. "Except what we're really gonna do is borrow some horses and ride down to the Inferno _today_. Crowley said he planned to sell Baby within a week. We don't have time to sit around or wait for another ship that's willing to take us."

Anna turned around so the crew couldn't see her lips move as she muttered, "You're in no condition to ride."

"Good thing you'll be with me to keep me from falling out of my saddle," said Dean out of the corner of his mouth. 

Out loud, one of the crew members wondered, "Where are we gonna get that many horses?" 

"We'll get as many as we can, and that's how many of us will make the ride," said Dean. "As long as we get three or four people down to the Inferno, that'll be enough to limp The Impala back here to pick up the rest of you."

A murmur began that sounded suspiciously like dissent. Dean spoke up over it, "The Impala has been my home since before I can remember. I'll be damned if I let Crowley have her. Now, I'll ride into the Inferno and sail her out by myself if I need to, but I sure could use a hand and I have a feeling most of you would like to keep your jobs, so who's with me?" 

"I think it's an idiotic plan, but I'm with you," said Anna, stepping up beside Dean with a reluctant smile perched on her lips.

The crew took their cue from Dean's enthusiasm and Anna's support. One by one, their hands went up until the whole small crowd was in agreement. 

"Great," said Dean. "Now we just have to steal some horses."

While the crew worked out who would stay and who would go with Dean, Anna pulled Dean aside. "Steal?" she said with a wince. 

"Yeah, what did you think I meant by 'borrow?'" Dean scoffed. 

"So, you're looking to add horse thievery to the long list of crimes you're wanted for."

"Well, I'd buy them with sexual favors, but I don't think even my ass is worth that much," Dean laughed. He sighed and wiped the joking smile off his face when he saw how serious Anna looked. "It's not like I have a choice, Anna. You know I've got nothing but the shirt on my back and The Impala, and now I don't even have her. Every penny I ever made either went towards paying off my debts with Crowley, or it went back into the crew and the ship. I'm broke."

Anna cocked her head with a sigh. "I've got a little saved up."

"Enough for four horses?" 

As it turned out, Anna had enough for three horses. Dean tried to argue that they could sail The Impala with three, but in the end two crew members came along with them and Dean and Anna shared a horse. Anna sat in front, citing the fact that she didn't want Dean steering while concussed, and Dean was forced to sit on the bobbing rump of the horse with his arms clamped around Anna's waist. 

Instead of swaying and dancing like the deck of a ship, the horse thudded along. And stank. And sweated until the moisture seeped into Dean's trousers. "I hate horses," he said into the back of Anna's shoulder. 

"They were your bright idea," she reminded him. 

"It was a stupid idea."

"I tried to tell you."

Their horse, with the extra weight, lagged behind. Dean waited until they were just out of earshot of the others before he asked Anna, "What do you know about the mer-folk?" 

Anna had just been drinking from her canteen. At Dean's question, she made a tiny choking noise and coughed most of her water onto the back of her horse's head. But she recovered and tried to sound nonchalant when she said, "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious."

Anna twisted around in the saddle until she was looking Dean in the eye. She wore a wide-eyed, half-smiling, tight-jawed expression. Dean could never tell whether that expression meant that Anna was afraid or if it meant she was about to rip his head off. 

"What's your problem? I just want to know if there are any around Stanford." 

"Not Stanford," said Anna, turning back around to face the road. "Not usually. There's a school of them up the coast, but that's miles away, and they don't travel far. Not into Stanford. Nowhere near any of the shipping lanes."

"They don't like people?"

"They prefer to go unseen by humans."

Dean rested his chin on Anna's shoulder. "What do you think it would take for one of them to come down to that cove where we made anchor?"

Anna shook Dean off her shoulder with a shrug. When she finally answered, her voice was soft. "I suppose they'd either have to be very lost, or very scared," she said. "Or there would have to be something very interesting in that cove."

\-----

If you didn't know what it was, the Inferno would have looked like an abandoned shipping dock in the middle of nowhere. Its piers were suspiciously well-maintained, but the sprawling warehouses on the shore were dilapidated enough that no one who happened to come across it would think that they were in use. Dean and his crew tied their horses just behind the tree line and approached the largest structure – an enormous rectangle of a building that straddled the water line, half on land and half supported by stilts out over the bay. 

The door was unlocked. Once inside, it was clear that the building's outward appearance was a ruse. On the inside, it was sturdy and polished. The wooden floor extended out over the water, and there were docks and moorings built into the edge. The ceiling was high. The back wall was nonexistent. This left a hole large enough for most ships to pass through. Dean had used this hidden dock on more than one occasion. It was a perfect place to load and unload conspicuous cargo away from prying eyes. 

And it was also a good place to store conspicuous ships. Docked snugly side by side were the Crossroad Deal and The Impala. 

"We could just take her," said Dean, his voice echoing in the cavernous building. 

Anna shook her head. "If you don't make nice with Crowley, we'll be running for the rest of our lives. Which won't be long." 

"You should listen to her more often," said a familiar voice from behind them. They spun around just in time to see Crowley entering through the door they'd left standing open. He slammed it behind him. "She always was smarter than you."

Dean's two crew members reached for the weapons at their hips, but they stopped at a shake of Dean's head. "We're just here to talk," he said, spreading his hands expansively. 

"Back from the dead, I see." 

"It's a talent."

When a few seconds passed, the lapping of waves at the sterns of the two ships as the only sound, Crowley held his hands out expectantly. "So? Make nice with me."

"Uh," said Dean. He glanced at Anna. She gave him that wide-eyed look again, and this time he was pretty sure it was the rip-your-head-off variety. How had he managed to ride all the way here without giving any serious thought to what he would say to Crowley when he finally got an audience with him? "I'm sorry for dumping your cargo."

"And?" Crowley raised his eyebrows. 

"And for going to Stanford before checking in with you."

" _And?_ " Crowley's voice took on a dangerous edge. "Apologies are cheap. I have The Impala. I can make a good, guaranteed, instant profit from selling her. If you want her back, you'd better convince me that you're worth my while."

Dean's jaw tightened until it ached. "You don't like me that much," he said. 

"God knows that's the truth."

"No," said Dean. "What God knows is that out of everyone in your little underworld, I take the most jobs and I take the most dangerous jobs. I do shit for you that no one in their right mind would agree to, because I'm desperate, and you know that, and you use it. So even if I have to dump a shipment to keep from getting pinched by the Navy, and even if I take a few days to go see my family, I still turn a better profit for you than half of the smugglers who you _don't_ bash in the head and whose ships you _don't_ steal. You're not selling Baby because it makes financial sense. You're doing it out of spite." 

It only lasted a second, but it was the only time Dean had ever seen Crowley speechless. "I won't deny that spite is a powerful motivating factor," he said when he'd regained his voice. 

"Get over yourself. The Impala is worth more to you in my hands than in anyone else's. Hell, I'll bet you've got a job lined up right now that you wish you could shove off on me. Something no one else will touch. Come on. I'll take it, whatever it is. All I need is my ship."

Anna stepped up to let her hand brush Dean's as they waited to see if the murderous rage on Crowley's face would resolve into understanding, or if he would have them all shot. Finally, the murderousness was replaced by mere petty disappointment as he said, "By sheer, idiotic, dumb luck on your part, I happen to be lining up just the sort of job you've described. It's high-risk, high-reward. The high reward means I don't trust you with it. The high risk means no one but you will take it."

"What is it?"

Crowley held up a finger. "Not so fast. You aren't even close to my good graces right now. I'm sending you on a nice, easy pick-up in Cuba first. That'll give me time to iron out the wrinkles in this big job, and it'll give you a chance to prove to me that you're not a complete waste of my time."

"Fine," said Dean. He kept his face controlled. He didn't want to let on what a boon this job in Cuba would be. He was used to running around the Caribbean, and he had plenty of contacts there if things got hairy. A simple job with a good payoff would give him time and money to get back on his feet. But it was better if he let Crowley think he was punishing him, so he tried his best to look chastened. 

"Fine," said Crowley. "I'll have the specs and your papers for you in the morning." 

Dean and his company almost let themselves breathe a sigh of relief as Crowley sauntered toward the door. But just before passing through it, he turned back and said with a grin, "Oh, and I'll be taking those horses you came in on as payment for the hash you made of that last job."

Dean bristled. "You didn't pay me for that job. We're even. You don't get to take more out of me because you feel like it."

"I do and I will, or The Impala stays where she is," said Crowley, clearly enjoying himself. "Don't worry. I'll be sure to think of your adorable, pouting face when I'm eating steak tomorrow."

Anna spoke up for the first time since Crowley arrived. "They're worth more sold than eaten."

"True, but I know you people are always strapped for cash, and I like the idea of taking whatever money you paid for those beasts, chewing it up, and shitting it out. Figuratively, at least. Ta-ta!" And he left, closing the door behind him. 

One of the crewmen spat on the deck. "Rat bastard," he muttered. 

"You can say that again," said Dean, running a hand over his face. "But he didn't shoot us. That's something." 

"And we got The Impala back," Anna added. She was trying to sound optimistic, but Dean could hear a note of bitterness in her voice.

"I owe you for those horses," he said. "I'm not just saying that. I'll pay you back."

"Forget it," said Anna. "It was Crowley who took them, not you."

"But you didn't have to..."

"I said forget it." 

They gratefully climbed aboard The Impala where she was moored, but the mood was bleak. They had won no victory but the right to keep sailing. That was victory enough, most of the time, but every once in a while it would have been nice not to come out two steps behind. There would be no celebration. 

When the other two crew members had gone to find their bunks, Anna stopped Dean with a hand on his chest. "I'm going to make sure Crowley's thugs didn't mess with any of my things. I'll be in your cabin in ten minutes. Be ready."

Oh. So there would be a celebration after all. 

Dean scuttled back to his cabin. It was small for a captain's quarters, but it was private, which was a luxury that only he and Anna enjoyed out of all the sailors on the ship. Luckily, it wasn't too badly ransacked considering how long Crowley had been in possession of the ship. Some drawers were emptied onto the floor and a foot locker was turned over, but nothing seemed to be missing. Dean would clean up later. For now all he needed was the bed. 

He stripped down and assumed the position: feet flat on the floor, legs straight, elbows on the mattress, ass in the air and pointed toward the door. And there he waited, the anticipation building with each passing minute. He rested his forehead between his hands, and he had a nice view of his cock steadily hardening as he waited to find out what Anna had in store for him. 

Neither of them spoke when she entered. They had done this enough times that there was no need for words, at least not yet. Dean could hear the sound of Anna kicking her shoes off, and the padding of her bare feet as she approached the bed. She placed a hand gently on his tailbone and ran it the length of his spine, down the curve of his back to his neck. She pressed down, forcing his face into the mattress. His back curved even more dramatically as he fought to keep his legs straight and his rear up, the way she liked. 

He heard the crack before he felt the sting. Anna may have had a slight frame and skinny arms, but she had the technique to make a spanking feel like a lashing. His right butt cheek tingled where she'd hit him. He imagined that he could feel the handprint there, down to each finger. 

He wiggled his hips with a smile. "That all you got?" 

Two more slaps, one right on top of the other, tore a low moan out of Dean's throat. He flinched right when he expected the next strike to fall, his knees buckling as his body tried to retreat from the pain. But the pain didn't come. Anna rested her hand lightly on Dean's stinging ass and said, "Relax into it. Take it. Don't be afraid."

Dean straightened his knees. This time, when Anna hit him, he didn't move expect to curl his fingers into his sheets and hold on. 

She was relentless, and she never missed. She didn't let herself fall into a rhythm; instead, she kept Dean guessing when the next strike would come, so that he was always quivering with the uncertainty of it. Soon, he couldn't hold back soft grunts with each slap. Then one of his grunts broke into a half-sob, and all he could do was whimper as he settled into that delicious tension: his animal brain screaming that he wanted her to stop, and his rational brain hanging on, knowing that he needed her to keep going. 

What he needed was to put his body in Anna's hands and give in to her, let her decide whether to stop, or whether to keep hurting him. Whether to give him pleasure or pain. Whether to let him come, or leave him shaking with desire all night. Every day he made decisions that could get himself and his whole crew killed, his ship wrecked, his livelihood ruined. Those terrible decisions were his. He was happy to hand over to Anna decisions like how many spankings he was going to get tonight. 

He liked her in control. Anna in control meant that Dean didn't have to be in control. And that was better, really. Authority suited her. Not like Dean. Authority had fallen into Dean's lap, and all these years later he still couldn't seem to figure out what to do with it. 

He was a terrible captain. 

"I'm sorry!" he gasped. 

Anna stopped. "What did you say?" 

"I'm sorry..." He was panting, gulping air, just this side of sobbing. "I... I fucked up the job. And I didn't face up to it, I... I ran back to Sam. I let Crowley get the drop on me. I lost all your savings. And I got us caught up in something... we don't even know if it's... I just fuck everything up."

With one hand on his hip and the other on his shoulder, Anna rolled Dean the rest of the way onto the bed so he was lying on his back. She hovered above him. He swallowed down tears. She watched until she was sure that none were going to spill – that he was hurt, but not broken. 

Dean didn't move – he hadn't been given permission to move – while Anna pulled her clothes off layer by layer, untying every drawstring and undoing every buckle and clasp. When she was naked, she folded her clothes and put them on a chair. Only then did she crawl into bed with Dean. She crawled on top of him, climbing his body until she was kneeling above him. Her shins pinned his wrists to the mattress. Her vulva, pink and glistening like an anemone, hovered just inches from his face. 

"So, make it up to me," she said. 

He opened his mouth like a dying man gasping for air and kissed her. At first desperately, and then slowly, like waves lapping, the way she liked. When he pulled her clit between his lips and sucked, rolling the hood back with his tongue and licking softly, she reached down and put a hand on the back of his head to hold him close. That simple touch pulled him out of despair and into rapture. It meant his shortcomings were forgiven, and it was all the sweeter because she had made him earn it. Anyone could offer him reassurance. Only Anna could give him absolution. 

She let him lick and suck at her until she was dripping wet, slick smeared on Dean's face from nose to chin. Then she carefully flipped herself around so she was on all fours, her vulva still pressed up against his mouth and his throbbing cock level with her face. While he pushed his tongue as deep inside her as he could manage, she licked his cock with the very tip of her tongue, only touching him for a second at a time. 

"Please..." he groaned in a muffled voice. He had been erect since before she'd entered the room. Now he was so hard that it ached. It radiated into his abs and his thighs – an unbearable tightness begging for release. Each touch of her tongue felt like it would be the one to send him over the brink. Each time she pulled away, he jerked and rutted against the air, trying to come from sheer force of will. 

But she waited until she had come first, her vagina tightening around his tongue and her clit pressed hard against his chin. Only then, after her hips had stopped bucking with the sensation of it, did she swallow him down until her lips were buried in the tangle of his hair and let him come hard and hot down her throat. She hadn't given him permission to touch her with his hands, so he grabbed the headboard and squeezed while his body shook and spasmed. 

When he lay still, Anna sat up, licked her lips like a cat, and curled up at his side. He put his arms around her. Cuddling was allowed now that the game was over. 

"Good boy," she whispered, tilting her head up to kiss some of her own tangy come from off his lips. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just gimme a minute," he rasped, and held her tighter. 

As he focused on breathing slowly and evenly, he gradually extracted his sense of self from Anna's unbending will. Eventually he felt like a real, separate person again, but the weight of responsibility had yet to fall back onto his shoulders. For a while, he could lie there with his body buzzing, his mind free, and his ears ringing with _Good boy_. 

"I needed that," he said. 

Anna snuggled closer. "I could tell. Want me to spend the night here?"

"If you don't mind."

"I never do."

She got up to put out the light, and then rejoined Dean in bed. She was almost asleep – Dean could tell by the cadence of her breathing – when something occurred to Dean that he couldn't keep from speaking aloud.

"What were you gonna do with that money you had saved?"

Dean felt Anna blink herself awake as a flutter of eyelashes against his chest. She answered, "Doesn't really matter now, does it?"

"Yeah, but what would you have done?"

She paused. Then she huffed a rueful laugh. "Bailed your ass out the next time you got into trouble."

They were silent for several minutes, but neither one fell asleep. Finally Dean asked, quieter this time, "This job Crowley has lined up for us. Not the one in Cuba, the other one, the one he won't tell us about yet. What kind of job do you think it'll be?"

"Do you want me to be honest?" said Anna. 

"Probably not, but do it anyway."

Anna took a deep breath and blew it out slowly so that the air brushed Dean's throat and made him shiver. "Whatever it is," she said, "I'm pretty sure by the end of it we'll be wishing we had just let Crowley keep our ship."

\-----

True to his word, Crowley returned the next morning with a sheaf of papers: instructions, contacts, and false identification for the job in Cuba. Dean and his tiny crew towed The Impala out of the covered dock and steered her back to sea. Dean waited until the Inferno was out of sight before he truly let himself believe that Crowley had let them go. He was back in command of his ship. At least for now. 

The sailing was smooth back up past Stanford and into the cove where the rest of the crew was camped out and waiting for them. Their arrival set off a chain reaction of cheering as the people on the shore looked up and saw their lost home and livelihood sailing in their direction. 

"Good to see you back in one piece, Captain," seemed to be the popular sentiment. 

"Hey!" Dean kept replying. "I can hold my own against Crowley." And for once, he had proof. He had brought the Impala back. 

While Dean was helping his crew back onto the ship, he noticed fishing line and tackle in the bottom of one of the dinghies. 

"Catch anything?" he asked. 

Two of the men immediately began arguing. 

"I would have speared us a hulking great octopus for dinner yesterday if this one-" and here he jerked a thumb at his companion, "hadn't pushed me and made me lose my grip."

The other sailor defended himself, "I'm telling you, I didn't see any octopus. There was a man in the water."

"We dove in that area for ages. If it was a man, I suppose he swam off with my new spear?"

Dean interrupted their squabbling, his gut twisting and his ears ringing. "Maybe you're both right. He could have been a merman."

Both men gave Dean a look. "All my years at sea, and I've never seen one. Besides, everyone knows they don't hang about where people are."

"Right," said Dean. "So, you missed?"

"Not at all. It was a fine stab," said the first man. "Whatever the thing was, it's surely dead by now."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean returns to the cave to look for Castiel and brings him to Bobby, who used to be a surgeon on John's pirate crew. But Castiel needs ongoing care, and Dean needs to get to Cuba. And there's only one way to do both.

Castiel barely existed to Dean. He was a handful of surreal moments in an underwater cavern. A quickly-fading, dreamlike impression. An unquantifiable experience. 

A burning, gut-tearing gratefulness to be alive. 

So Dean went to bed that night only for something deep in his stomach to tug him toward the ocean until he relented and went out to stand on the deck of his ship, looking into the inky water as if it held some kind of answer. There was no movement down there but the gently lapping waves. 

If Castiel had survived, he was probably making his way up the coast, back to where Anna had said that more of his kind lived. More likely, he was dead on the ocean floor somewhere and Dean stood no chance of ever finding his body. But there was one more possibility, and that possibility was what finally made Dean tear his gaze away from the water and begin to kick off his shoes and strip out of his coat, vest, and shirt. 

He dove in. With a great gulp of air and all the strength he could muster, he began searching for Castiel's cave. 

After diving and resurfacing five times, he was beginning to think that it was pointless. He could barely reach the bottom of the cove, and when he did he could see next to nothing by the starlight trickling through the water. All he was doing was wearing himself out and giving himself hypothermia. But just then, the moon came out from behind the clouds. By its light, Dean saw the beach. He was even able to pinpoint the exact spot where Anna had dragged him out of the water. 

Comparing his position to that spot, Dean paddled his way over to where he thought he might have come up on his way out of the cave. And he dove one more time. 

Even by the light of the moon, the landscape under the water was murky and indistinct. Every shadow looked like the entrance to a cave, and everything was in shadow. Dean felt his way around hopelessly. He was about to give up and kick his way back to the surface when his searching hand slipped off of bare rock and into a dark void. What he had thought was just another shadow was actually an opening in the rock, just big enough to be the tunnel he was looking for. 

It might have been nothing but a shallow depression in the rock. It might have been an entrance to the wrong sea cave. It might have been a long tunnel leading to a blind end, with no pocket of air on the other side. But it might have led to Castiel, and if Dean surfaced now he would never find it again. 

He kicked his way inside and pulled himself forward by the craggy rocks around him. He was vaguely aware of when he passed the point of no return – the last point at which he could have turned back and still had enough air to reach the surface again – but he shoved past it with barely a thought. He would be dead if not for Castiel. If Castiel was in that tunnel, hurt and dying, then Dean owed it to him to find him. Or drown in there, which was looking ever more likely. 

When Dean hit a wall, he thought he was dead, but then it occurred to him to look up. Above him, he could see silvery surface and the soft glow of blue algae. He scrabbled his way up to it and broke through, sputtering and coughing. 

It was definitely the same cave. Dean could even see the shelf of rock where he'd woken up days before. But there was no sign of Castiel. Dean allowed himself a few minutes to cling to the rock and catch his breath before scraping a handful of algae off the wall and diving back down. 

He lit his way with the algae, casting its light on every crack and crevice in the rock. He saw nothing more interesting than a few crabs and guppies. Then, at the bend where the vertical tunnel became a horizontal one, he shined his light on a nook in the rock just big enough for a human torso to squeeze through. The nook was filled in with a fleshy, ropy mass. As he drew closer, Dean could see a line of suckers. 

Dean touched it, and the mass flinched away so violently that a surprised burst of bubbles escaped Dean's lips. He went up for another breath, and then back down again. He shoved his hand into the nook. By the fading light of his algae lantern, he could see the outline of a man pressed against the back wall of the nook, his hands up and ready to fight, his boneless lower half coiled tightly and defensively around the right side of his abdomen, where a trickle of blood was darkening the already-dark water. 

Dean dropped the algae and beckoned with his hand. Castiel shook his head and drew back deeper into the rock. There was nothing for Dean to do but swim back up into the blue cave and pull himself out of the water and onto the little ledge. 

He knew enough about octopuses to be sure that he wasn't strong enough to pry Castiel off of the rocks if he didn't want to come. But he would be damned if he was going to swim out of there empty-handed after all the effort he'd gone through to find the place. So he sat on the rocks and waited for an idea to come to him. As the minutes dragged, be began absentmindedly drumming his fingers on his perch. 

At first he tapped randomly. Then the beats to his favorite songs began flicking out of his fingers. The music, such as it was, calmed him. It helped him forget that he was stuck underwater without so much as a clue, let alone a plan. The melodies began rumbling in his chest. No words, just a deep humming. 

It didn't occur to him that Castiel might be listening. Not until he heard the soft _splish_ of broken surface tension. He stopped humming, looked up, and saw Castiel's face poking out of the water right by his feet. 

Castiel gasped, and Dean almost reached down to help him keep his head above water before he realized that Castiel was not fighting for air, but panting from pain and exertion. Castiel held onto the rocky ledge, white-knuckled, his legs still coiled around in the wound in his side. He couldn't swim. He had climbed up the rocks hand-over-hand.

He looked like shit. The bleeding aside, his eyes were glassy and his skin was so pale that it had a greenish tint. Even with the water buoying him up, his arms shook with the effort of holding himself above water. Dean offered him a hand again, but Castiel shied away. 

"Why are you here?" he rasped. He sounded even worse than he looked, like each word was being torn out of him with great effort. 

"Is this a trick question?" Dean scoffed. His hand hovered in front of Castiel's face, though Castiel made no move to take it. 

"I don't need your help."

"Bullshit. Would you take my fucking hand before you sink?"

"Do you think you owe me this? Do you think this makes us even?"

Dean hadn't thought about it that way, but he nodded with a sarcastic frown. "Well, I'm saving your life, so yeah, I think this about squares us out."

"I'm not interested in charity offered out of a misplaced sense of obligation." That sentence was enough to wind Castiel, and for a moment Dean really did think he would lose his grip and sink. But he held on.

"You got room to be picky right now?" said Dean. "Look, I'm here. I'm here, okay? What does it matter why? I'm here to help you."

Castiel's fingers began to slide off the rock as his grip weakened. His eyelids drooped, then fluttered, then closed. With the last of his strength, he lifted one hand and placed it in Dean's. "Then help me," he whispered just before he fainted dead away. 

Dean hauled his limp body onto the ledge. Even straight out of the chilly water, his skin was warm and feverish to the touch. "Shit..." Dean muttered as he laid him flat. His many legs flopped away to reveal a nasty, oozing wound as long as a hand was wide. The spear had landed right in his gut, on the line where purplish-brown octopus flesh became smooth human skin. In the center of the knot of clotting blood, Dean could see the splintered remains of the shaft of the spear and, a little deeper, the flared back end of the spearhead lodged in the wall of his belly. 

He'd been down here like this for nearly two days. It was a wonder that he was still alive. 

But by the look of him, he wouldn't be for long. His chest rose and fell, but his breathing was ragged and stuttering. His eyes were rolled back in his head when Dean lifted his eyelids to see, and the whites were bloodshot. Dean inspected Castiel's wound again. He didn't see any pus or blackened skin to suggest blood poisoning, but he wouldn't be at all surprised if something was festering in there. He didn't dare try to pull the spearhead out. He was no doctor. 

Who could he go to for help? His crew wouldn't understand. They were loyal, but they were as superstitious as most sailors and Dean didn't think they'd react well to the shock of seeing one of their late-night-watch fairy tales come to life. Besides, they were much more interested in staying in work and in coin than in helping their captain pay off personal debts. They'd see Castiel as an unwanted distraction at best. At worst, a monster. 

Anna would sympathize, but she was too fiercely practical for Dean to fully trust her with such an illogical request. She had her own best interests at heart, and Dean's, and the crew's. She wasn't the type to risk everything for a stranger. 

So once Dean had made the long, treacherous swim out of the cave, alternating between pushing Castiel's senseless body ahead of him and towing it behind him (and occasionally going up for air), he stashed Castiel safely in some deep tide pools. And then he made his way, faster than he had ever made it before, through the brush and up to the road to Stanford. 

He ran the road so quickly that his clothes were still damp when he made it to Sam's door. He rapped on it twice – loud enough to wake Sam, but hopefully not so loud that it would wake Jess and her family upstairs. Then he leaned against the wall and doubled over, huffing and trying to regain enough breath to speak by the time Sam opened the door. 

The door cracked open just far enough for Dean to see a lock of tussled hair and one bleary eye. Then Sam recognized his brother. Fully awake in an instant, he closed the door, rustled around inside for several seconds, and then reappeared fully (if messily) dressed. He joined Dean on the street and shut the door behind him, never opening it enough for Dean to be able to see inside. "What happened?"

"Can I come in and sit down?" Dean asked, gesturing to the state of his clothes. 

Sam hesitated for so long that it blew right past suspicious and into comical. "... no," he finally said. 

When no further answer appeared to be on the way, Dean spread his hands and said, "... why?"

Sam swiped a hand over his face and set about straightening his clothes. "Because Jess is inside, and if you went in now you'd see more of her than I think she wants you to see." 

Even with the night he had been having, Dean's mind ground to a halt. "You..." he sputtered. "You're getting action?" 

"Would you shut up and tell me why you're here?" Sam snapped, reddening. 

"You _are!_ " said Dean, louder than was wise. "You sneaky bastard! You're not even married yet!" 

Sam's blush faded as righteous indignation took over. "Oh, is a marriage license required to share a bed now? Because wow, congratulations, I must have missed it when you got married to Anna. And, oh, half the population of the southern coastline."

"It's okay when I do it," Dean insisted. "But you... you were always so proper about it. I didn't figure..."

"Please tell me you're not going to try and scold me."

"Scold you? I could kiss you! I'm definitely buying you about fifty beers later. Ah... that is, after you help me with a little situation I have at the moment."

He filled Sam in as best he could, leaving out as much about his deal with Crowley as he could manage. The holes in his story weren't exactly well-patched, and at first Sam looked like he would have liked to stop Dean and ask some probing questions. But once Dean got to the part about Castiel and the events of the last couple of hours, Sam seemed to forget his suspicions. Instead, he sat down against the wall of his house and rested his head in his hands. "You are fucking with me," he said. 

"'Fraid not, Sammy."

It would be a hard story to swallow for anyone. Dean resolved to give Sam five minutes, give or take, to process it. Sam was back on his feet in less than two. There was a low fire of resolve in his eyes, the kind Dean hadn't seen since Sam left The Impala. "This merman. He saved your life?" was all he asked. 

"I'd be at the bottom of the cove right now if it weren't for him, and you'd never have found out what happened to me."

Sam nodded. "Then you know who we need."

"I can't take him to any doctor, Sammy. I need someone I can trust."

"Exactly."

"Wait... no. You don't mean..."

Sam shrugged. "He was a surgeon."

"Decades ago, Sam," said Dean. " _Decades._ "

"Do you have anyone else in mind?"

Dean did not. "Fine," he said. "Let's go."

\-----

Robert Singer had already accumulated a long and colorful history as a pirate even before he became the ship's surgeon on The Impala under John Winchester. John had been new to pirating and, though he was the captain by virtue of owning the boat they sailed on, he owed every bit of his knowledge to Bobby. Bobby had run things behind the scenes for those first few crucial years. Then he'd retired, but by then John was in the perfect position to become the most feared pirate in the Caribbean. 

As for Bobby Singer, he did what most pirates never get the chance to do: settle down and live off his spoils. He was still a great forger, and his old friends still came to him for false documents and real advice. He could even be persuaded to go along on a quick job every now and then, if the money was good and the risk was low. But mostly he kept to himself in the abandoned salvage lot just outside of Stanford and drank a lot. 

To Dean, Bobby was like family. Dean had even encouraged Sam to settle down in Stanford specifically because he wanted Bobby around if Sam ever got in trouble. But that didn't mean he was exactly eager to go crawling to the old man for help. 

The door of Bobby's shack bowed inward when Dean knocked on it. Seconds later it opened, and the barrel of a rifle appeared. The rifle barrel swung from Dean's chest up to Sam behind him, and then a voice at the other end of the gun said, "Oh. It's you," and the rifle was lowered. Bobby's familiar craggy, bearded face poked out of the darkness and into the moonlight. "Well, come on in and tell me what the emergency is."

"I didn't say anything about an emergency," said Dean as he stepped over the threshold.

"Of course there's an emergency," Bobby growled. "Not like you idjits ever drop by just to say 'hello.'"

For being a shack in the middle of a salvage yard, Bobby's home was surprisingly welcoming on the inside. It had all the necessities, plus a few creature comforts, and a small fortune in books that Bobby had collected over his years of piracy. It was comfortable. But none of the men bothered to make themselves comfortable now – they all knew that they wouldn't be staying long. 

Dean had given Sam the shortened version of the story, and now Sam gave Bobby the shortened version of that story. "I know it's a lot to take in all at once," said Sam, "but..."

Bobby smacked Dean upside the head with a dish towel. 

"Ow!"

"You were here less than a week ago and you didn't come and see me?" Bobby scolded, brandishing the towel. 

Dean frowned. "Did you hear a word he said?" 

"Of course I did," Bobby sighed. "He said that you want me to go out to your stupid cove in the middle of the night and patch up some poor half-fish kid who was too stupid not to get himself speared through the gut, all because _you_ were too stupid not to get yourself conked on the head and drowned." 

Bobby could complain like a mule, but in the end he always came through. Sam and Dean looked at him expectantly until he rolled his eyes and said, "I'll get my coat."

Dean couldn't convince them to run as fast as he had, but they made good time back to the ship anyway. Castiel was where Dean had left him. Dean was half hoping that he'd have regained consciousness, but if anything he looked even worse. For a moment he looked dead, but then his legs twitched and his lower half ballooned out as he drew water up and through his gills. The underwater version of breathing. 

Together, the three of them managed to haul Castiel aboard The Impala and sneak him into Dean's little cabin. Dean laid Castiel on his bed. He couldn't even make himself care that blood from Castiel's wounds and a slimy sheen from his tentacles were staining his sheets. 

"Balls..." Bobby muttered as he inspected Castiel's wound. Sam stood behind him, holding up a lamp. "This wasn't pretty even before it sat untreated for two days."

The jostling around, and now Bobby's prodding, was beginning to wake Castiel up. His head flopped to the side and his lips parted, though no sound came out. Dean rested a hand on his head, willing him back to sleep. "You can fix him up, right?"

"Hold your horses. I won't know how bad it is until I get this thing out." He poked gingerly at the end of the broken spear, testing to see how firmly it was lodged. Castiel's eyebrows moved closer together, and a soft sighing sound came from the back of his throat. 

"Make it quick, okay?"

"You gonna tell me how to do my job?" Bobby snapped. "It'll take as long as it takes to do it right. You just make sure he stays quiet, or you'll have some explaining to do when your crew comes running."

"How am I supposed to do that?" 

"I don't care. Gag him, if you have to." He opened his medical bag, pulled out something gleaming and metallic, and bent over to begin working. 

Dean didn't watch. It wasn’t that he didn't have the stomach for such things; a childhood peppered with stab wounds and gunshots had erased whatever squeamishness he may have started with. He didn't watch because he didn't need to watch. He knew how these things went. Instead, he kept his eyes on Castiel's face and braced himself for the screaming that he knew would come. 

Castiel's eyes flew open, unfocused and sightless. His lips curled back against clenched teeth. He gripped weakly at Dean's arms, his hands shaking with the effort. But he didn't scream. The only sound he made was a quiet, choked moan. Dean frowned. Either Castiel was one tough bastard, or he was farther gone than Dean had realized. 

"Dean?" said Bobby's bemused voice. Dean glanced up to see two of Castiel's tentacles winding their ways around Bobby's wrists, pushing his hands away. Three more tentacles curled up to cover the wound that was now bleeding fresh and fast. When Sam tried to pry the tentacles off of Bobby, more rose up to fight him off, too. 

Dean bent back over Castiel's face, tapping his cheeks lightly and calling his name. "Cas?" he said. The nickname came to him as naturally as 'Sammy' had decades ago. "Cas, look at me." For a second it looked like Castiel's eyes were trying to focus, but then they glazed back over – half-awake and confused and hurting. 

"C'mon, Cas, it's not that..." Then Dean swallowed hard as he recognized his father's words coming out of his mouth. He'd heard them when he was eight (getting a broken arm set) and when he was fourteen (having shrapnel dug out of his back) and countless times before, after, and in between. _It's not that bad. Man up. Get yourself through it._

It had worked. Dean had manned up and gotten himself through it. But John's presence had always been a challenge, and never a comfort. 

So instead, Dean leaned in closer to whisper in Castiel's ear, "Cas, listen to me. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere, okay? Hang on to me. I'm gonna get you through this. But you gotta let Bobby do his thing, you hear me? He's gonna fix you. I promise." At first Castiel's fingers dug harder into Dean's shoulders, his pained breath hissing in Dean's ear. But then his grip loosened by a fraction. Dean peeked over his shoulder just in time to see Castiel's tentacles slide away from Bobby's hands and coil themselves at the foot of the bed, out of the way. 

Bobby wore the serene expression of a man who cannot be surprised anymore. 

Dean pleaded, "Get it done."

Castiel didn't wake up through the whole thing. Not really. His eyes stayed open, locked on nothing. Eventually his teeth unclenched and his jaw cranked open, every sinew of his face so tight with pain that it hurt Dean just to look at him. But even then, nothing came out of his mouth but weak groans and gagging coughs. His fingers clamped down on Dean's arms so hard that they felt like they would pop through the skin. Every time his grip tightened, Dean would whisper in his ear, "Almost there. Almost done. I got you. It's okay, I got you..." Soothing, intimate things that he wouldn't have dared to say if Castiel had been conscious. But it didn't matter that they were effectively strangers. Whatever Castiel needed to hear at that moment, Dean was willing to say it. 

When it was over, Dean's sheets were a bloody mosaic. But the spear head was on the floor, and the nasty, oozing gash was nothing more than a line of stitches. 

"Wow," said Dean. "That looks better. That looks good. It's good, right?"

Bobby rinsed his hands off in a bowl of water. The water turned the color of rust. "It's better than it was. But it ain't good. Pretty damn far from." He squinted down at Castiel's waist and ran a finger over the base of one of his tentacles. "He seem dry to you?" 

"Huh?"

"How long can he be out of the water without shriveling up?" 

Dean mimicked Bobby, testing Castiel's skin with two fingers. It felt fragile and sticky, like when you wake up after sleeping with your mouth open and your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth. "I don't know," he said. "But let's not find out."

Dean rolled an enormous basin out of a storage compartment, and with a bucket on the end of a rope Sam quickly hauled up enough water to fill it. Dean winced at the prospect of salt water on a fresh wound, but when he laid Castiel down in it he actually gave a relieved little sigh. His tentacles plumped up with moisture and became slick again. Somehow, though the basin didn't seem big enough to allow it, Castiel managed to curl up so that he was completely under the water. 

Bobby, Sam, and Dean watched him for several seconds. When he didn't move, Bobby sighed and said, "Okay, now what?" 

"How long will it be until he wakes up?" Sam wondered. 

Bobby gave him a look. "Do you think I'm psychic?"

"In your professional opinion?" said Dean. 

"In my professional opinion..." Bobby sighed. "In my professional opinion, he's probably not gonna wake up. That wound is festering down deep. He needs time to fight off that infection. And the ocean just isn't a friendly enough place to give him that time."

"Then we'll buy him time," said Dean. "Bobby. If we rig up a stretcher, could we get him back to your place before he dries out again?"

"If you think you're leaving him with me, you've got another think coming. I've got old friends who I can't keep from dropping in on me. And most of them are the type that, well, if they saw a living merman then by God they'd find a way to make a buck off him. I hear there's a market for their organs up in New England."

Dean shuddered, then looked at Sam. 

Sam winced apologetically. "I'd do it," he said. "You know I'd do it for you, but... how the Hell would I explain him to Jess?" 

They stood in silence. Finally, Dean nodded and said, "Okay. Okay. I'll take him. It's the only way. I gotta take him to Cuba with me." 

Sam blinked. "Cuba?"

"I've got a job."

"What about the wedding?" 

"When I get back, Sammy."

"You said that last time. Just stay for a few days, it won't take..."

"This can't wait. I'm sorry."

Sam stared, but Dean refused to meet his eyes. "Fine," said Sam as he stormed out of the cabin and back toward the dinghy. 

When he was gone, Bobby tilted his head toward Dean and asked, "This about Crowley?"

"No," said Dean.

"Don't lie to me, boy. You in trouble?"

"I can handle it."

Bobby caught Dean's jaw in his hand and brushed his thumb against Dean's temple and the corner of his eye where the edges of his black bruises were beginning to heal into yellows and greens. Dean jerked his head away. "You sure you can afford this extra risk?" said Bobby, gesturing at the basin where Castiel was sleeping. 

"I don't have a choice," said Dean. "I owe him."

"You owe too many people."

Dean grinned wryly. "Tell me about it."

\-----

When Dean woke up the next morning before dawn, having caught less than four hours of sleep after seeing Bobby and his brother back to Stanford, he lit his lamp and held it over the basin of water that took up a good chunk of his cabin's floor space. Castiel didn't seem to have moved since the last time Dean had checked on him. He was still folded up under the water, his thick tentacles coiled around the bottom and his human upper half resting on top of them. The water had evaporated off a little, and Castiel's bare back was almost grazing the surface. 

Dean placed the palm of his hand against one bony shoulder blade, just to make sure the skin beneath the water was still warm and alive. Castiel stirred at his touch, but didn't wake. 

Dean hauled one more bucket of water up through the porthole in his cabin wall and dumped it into Castiel's basin, just to make sure he had enough. Then he rooted through his possessions until he found the key to his cabin door hiding in a box with a few other odds and ends that he seldom used. He went out onto the deck, locking the door behind him. 

His crew was just coming up from below decks. They saluted him as they passed. 

"Let's get to work," said Dean. 

They edged their way out of the cove by the light of the sunrise, turned southward, and sailed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel wakes up, and he's not happy to find out where he is. Dean realizes that being responsible for Cas is going to be more work than he thought.

The open ocean held a strange sense of privacy for Dean.

Not that it was really private. After all, he was packed onto a boat with his crew like peas in a pod, and there was very little they could do to escape each other. It wasn't like the land, where one could wander off and find some space to oneself. Every inch of space on The Impala was spoken for, whether by some person or some purpose. Everyone was accounted for at every moment of the day and night. In many ways it was one of the least private places imaginable. 

But then, Dean would turn a slow circle on the deck and see the unbroken waterline forming a horizon in three hundred and sixty degrees, and he would feel so blissfully alone that it ached. There were no societal expectations or obscure rules of conduct out here in the blue. There was only work to be done. As long as each member of the crew did his or her part, the ship ran like an organism in and of itself. And when she sailed, she was free. 

Dean fed on that freedom, feeling his ship as an extension of himself, cutting through the water toward the never-ending horizon, tranquil in his solitude. 

Castiel ruined all of that. 

With Castiel on board, the ship became a trap. Even the horizon seemed to be penning them in. Dean scratched and fidgeted his way through his duties, always with one eye on his cabin door. He couldn’t enjoy the work, couldn’t let himself be one with the flow of action on the deck, couldn't subsume himself into the mechanism of the ship and enjoy her ride. Not when, just yards away, there slept a secret that could tear his crew apart. 

He couldn't relax even when he was alone in his cabin. He had always had just as much space as he had needed in there, and no more. Now with a huge basin of water sitting in the middle of it, the cabin was decidedly less comfortable. Every time Dean barked his shins against the edge of it, or had to climb over it to get to his bed, it was one more reminder that the one room on the ship that should have been reserved especially for him was no longer his own. 

It wouldn't have been so bad if he could have seen some reward for his trouble, but Castiel stubbornly refused to improve. He just stayed curled motionless under the water, looking unnervingly drowned. Dean carefully lifted him out of the water whenever he got the chance. His wound seemed to be healing well, and his fever began to go down. With some effort, Dean even managed to get Castiel to swallow the medicine Bobby had left with him. But still Castiel didn't wake. 

After two awful, sleepless days at sea, the doubt that always lived in Dean began to balloon into something monstrous. Perhaps he shouldn't have dragged Castiel out of that cave. If he was going to die anyway, what was the point of putting him through the pain of closing his wound and confining him in a basin for the last few miserable days of his life? Wouldn't it have been better to let him drift off peacefully and undisturbed in a familiar place? 

By the third day, Dean's thoughts turned morbid. He couldn't help but notice that Castiel's body would not fit through the porthole in his cabin. If Castiel died (and in his mind, Dean went back and forth between _if_ and _when_ ), Dean would have to take a late-night watch alone in order to have time to drag Castiel out on deck and dump him overboard. 

When he returned to his cabin that night, his hope had dwindled so low that he was half prepared to find Castiel lying dead. He certainly wasn't prepared to find the basin empty. He was so unprepared that, when that is exactly what he found, all he could do was stand there and stare at the wooden bottom through the empty water, the cogs of his brain whirring as he tried to figure out what had happened. 

It occurred to him too late to turn around and look behind the door. 

He felt the door handle slip out of his grasp as something slammed it closed behind him. Then he was on the floor with very little recollection of how he'd gotten there. 

The first thing he noticed, besides the hard floor at his back, was the cold. Something cold and wet and incredibly strong was twisting itself around his waist between his shirt and his trousers, around his thighs, and his chest. Then it found its way around his neck and tightened, cutting off his air before he could even think to cry out. He flailed upwards with his fists. Something wrapped around his wrists and pressed his arms back down to the floor, but this time it wasn't cold, this time it was warm skin and thick fingers – human hands attached to human arms and a human face above them. 

"Cas..." Dean choked out. 

Castiel's face fell from chilly resolve to mortified horror in an instant. "Dean!" he gasped, and the cold grip of his tentacles loosened. 

Dean gave him a shove, and Castiel fell off of him in a heap of elbows and tentacles. Coughing, Dean scrambled to his feet. "What the..." He had to pause for one more coughing fit, and then, "What the _fuck_ , man?" 

"I didn't know it was you," said Castiel. 

"Maybe fucking take a look before you go and strangle a guy?" Dean snapped, rubbing his neck. Luckily, it didn't feel like it was going to bruise. Those would have been difficult marks to explain to his crew. 

"Dean." Castiel levered himself off the floor and stood up, balancing on his tentacles. From a squishy pile on the floor, they thickened and straightened until, together, they formed a column. On top of that column, Castiel was almost as tall as Dean. He looked him in the eye. "I apologize. But in my place, would you have stopped to ask questions?" 

In Castiel's place? Waking up in a strange room after days of delirium? Out of his element? A stranger walking through the door? Oh. Yeah. Dean wouldn't have strangled anybody; he would have shot them dead. "Okay, fair enough." 

Castiel nodded, satisfied. He sank down on his tentacles and began using them to pull his way back to his basin of water. In the water, they had looked silky and graceful. Now they slapped their way across the floor like wet rags. It would have been comical if Dean couldn't still feel the imprint of one of them across his stomach, where it had held him as strong and hard as wood. 

Castiel wobbled once. His hand went to his side, where his stitches were straining against his movements. "You need some help?" Dean asked. 

Castiel's eyes dared Dean to touch him. 

"Geez, fine," said Dean, putting his hands up. "Just offering." 

Castiel tipped himself back into the basin with a small splash. After dipping his whole body under the water, he popped back up and set his forearms on the edge, looking at Dean expectantly. "So," he said. "Where am I?" 

"Uh," said Dean. He spread his arms. "Welcome to my humble abode."

"Very humble..." said Castiel under his breath as he glanced around the tiny room. 

"Better get used to it. It's your abode too, for the next few weeks at least."

Castiel didn't ask what Dean meant by that. He just squinted at him until Dean felt compelled to go on. 

"We're, uh..." said Dean. "We're on our way to Havana. It's just a quick run. Just picking up a few things. As soon as we're done down there, I'll bring you back home. I promise, okay? I promise."

But even as Dean layered explanation on explanation, Castiel's eyes grew wider and his mouth tightened. "We're asea?" 

Dean pointed at the porthole in the wall by way of proof. Castiel leaned over the side of his basin to poke his head out of the little window. He looked left and right. When he pulled his head back inside, he was a couple of shades paler than before. He drew back from the porthole as if he were afraid that he might be sucked out of it at any moment, and huddled back down in his basin. 

"Where's the shore?" he demanded. 

"We're too far out to see it," said Dean. "But it's that way." He pointed. 

"Take me there. Let me off. I'll get home on my own."

Dean blinked. "Uh, no. No, that sounds like a terrible idea. For one thing, you're hurt. I mean you just almost died. You could barely crawl five feet just now, so there's no way you're making it up two hundred miles of coastline. For another thing, we're coming up on the Georgia coast. There's a Navy warship stationed outside of Savannah. If we come within sight of land, they'll be on us like a hound out of Hell." 

Castiel's tentacles curled with anger, the tips poking out of the water and rolling into tight spirals. "You should never have brought me aboard your ship."

"Right, I should have left you to die. I'm so sorry," said Dean. 

"You could have returned me to my cave after treating my wound."

"Yeah, and I'm sure you would have woken up before you starved to death or died of blood poisoning," Dean shot back in the most sarcastic tone he could manage. "It's not like I've been playing your nursemaid for the last three days or anything."

"If you had returned me to my people, they would have taken care of me," said Castiel, glowering. 

"I don't even know where your people are! No one does! What was I supposed to do, go two days out of my way to dump you overboard somewhere around the place where someone saw a mermaid once ten years ago, and hope one of your kind picked you up before you got eaten by bottom-feeders?" 

Castiel tried to lift himself up on his tentacles to match Dean for height again, but he gave up, wincing and holding his side. "So your only option was to make me your captive?" he said ruefully. 

"Don't be so dramatic. I said I'd bring you right back." 

Castiel just glared. 

Dean didn't mean to laugh at Castiel's displeasure, but a chuckle escaped him anyway. "Hey, I know you're pissed," he said, "but I'm still just happy you're not dead."

Castiel's tentacles finally uncurled and dropped back into the water. "I suppose I am, too," he muttered. He turned around and set about trying to make himself comfortable by leaning against the side of the basin. 

Dean sat on his bed and tried not to stare at his temporary roommate. It had been one thing when Castiel was asleep. It had been like having an extra piece of furniture. But now that he was awake it was a whole new level of awkward. The way Castiel was sitting, with just his bare chest and shoulders poking above the surface of the water, he could easily have been naked. Then it belatedly occurred to Dean that Castiel _was_ naked, and always had been, of course, and once that thought had entered his mind it stubbornly refused to leave. 

"Do you require something?" said Castiel when he noticed Dean blatantly staring. 

Dean was about to say something lewd, but instead what came out was, "How did you know my name?" 

Castiel's eyes darted away. Almost too quickly, he said, "I overheard your crewmates talking about you just before they stabbed me."

"Oh," Dean said. Then, "What were you doing so close to their boat, anyway?"

This time, Castiel met Dean's eyes and paused before answering, "Looking for you."

A lump of guilt rose up in Dean's throat. He swallowed it down. "Oh," he said.

\-----

If Dean had thought that Castiel was an intrusion on his privacy while he was unconscious, that was nothing compared to after he woke up. 

His little ambush-attack appeared to have taken it out of him, so he hunkered down in his basin to nurse his wound. But a few hours later, when Dean was just skimming the edge of sleep, a voice said in the darkness, "Dean."

"Mwha?" Dean opened his eyes. The room was dark except for the bluish outline of a face lit by the moonlight through the porthole, and two pinpricks of light glinting off of eyes. The face was less than two feet from his own. His body jerked ungracefully in surprise. "Don't do that!" 

"I need to talk to you," said Castiel, not moving away. 

"You can talk to me without looking up my nose." When Castiel had obliged by scooting over to the far side of his basin, putting a few more feet between himself and Dean, Dean said, "Okay, what do you want?"

"This water is stale," said Castiel, splashing lightly with a tentacle. "It's warm, and I can't breathe in it anymore."

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"Get me new water."

Dean hesitated. Sleep was a precious commodity aboard a ship. And his bed had just warmed to his temperature, his thin mattress molding to his body as well as it ever would. "In the morning," he said, putting his head back down on his pillow with a yawn. 

"If you're going to keep me captive, the least you can do is make my conditions livable." 

"You're living just fine," Dean said into his pillow.

"I can't breathe."

"Stick your head out of the water and breathe with your damn lungs like normal people."

"It's uncomfortable."

"Suck it up." Dean threw his head back onto his pillow and shut his eyes. 

There came the soft sound of water sloshing. Dean ignored it. Then there came the slap of wet flesh hitting the wooden floor, and Dean cracked one eye open just in time to see Castiel half in his basin, and half out of it. Before Dean could say anything, Castiel attached four legs to the floor and four legs to the edge of the basin, and with a knotting of muscle and a mighty pull he upended the whole thing with a crash of water. 

The water spread out to cover every inch of Dean's floor, and then slowly began to seep into the wood and trickle out from under the door. Castiel plonked the basin back down where it had been and raised his eyebrows expectantly. 

"You stupid fucking..." Dean sputtered. His hands reached out, fingers clawed, half in frustration and half in threat. "You want more water? I'll throw you the fuck overboard, how do you like that?"

Castiel almost snarled, "You can try." He raised two tentacles, each as thick at the base as Dean's calves. And then two things occurred to Dean. One, those tentacles had just turned over a basin of water that Dean couldn't have moved with all his strength. Dean had absolutely no chance of besting Castiel unarmed. Two, even as Castiel poised himself to fight back, his body shrank in on itself and his eyes went wide. 

Dean had seen enough people looking for a fight, and enough people scared for their lives, to know the difference. And Castiel wasn't looking for a fight. 

With a sigh, Dean sat back down on the edge of his bed. "You scared of me?" he said. 

"No." Castiel's voice was so hard and even that Dean found it hard to disbelieve him. And yet. 

"Then what's your problem?"

Castiel couldn't keep his eyes from darting to the porthole and the moonlit waves outside. He said, his voice going just a shade softer, "I don't want to die out here."

Dean scoffed. "What, the water? You're scared of the water? You fucking _live_ in the water."

"No," said Castiel. "I live in the rocks. Out here, in the open water, I am as vulnerable as you."

"You can't drown though."

"Yes. And long past the time a human would have mercifully drowned, I'll still be sinking. I'll be conscious and aware when I sink into view of something big enough to kill me. Or when I get deep enough that the weight of the water crushes the life out of me. Or..."

"Geez, okay, I get it." Dean couldn't help but shudder. It had been a long time since he was a child, looking over the railing and wondering how long it would take his body to touch bottom, but that old horrified awe was still there if he looked back for too long. He slid his feet off the bed and onto the solid wood floor. "But you don't have to worry. The Impala is safe."

"Not for me," said Castiel. He spread his arms, inviting Dean to look at him: huddled on the floor, his tentacles spreading out, trying to seep up the last of the standing moisture before it disappeared into the floorboards.

Wordlessly, Dean stood up. Sam had tied a bucket to the end of a rope in order to fill the basin the first time – the bucket and rope were still standing in the corner of the cabin. Dean retrieved them. The bucket barely fit out the porthole, and when it popped through and hit the water below the waves almost tore the rope out of Dean's hands. But he held on, hauled it back up, and emptied it into the basin.

Maybe it was because he had been distracted before, but it seemed that the basin had become full a lot faster when Sam was the one doing the work. Ten bucketsful later, the water in the basin was no more than the depth of a puddle. But Dean offered Castiel his hand and said, "You getting in or what?" and this time, Castiel took it. He pressed on Dean's hand, trusting his weight to him as he climbed back into the life-giving water. There wasn't even enough to cover the tops of his tentacles. He swished the cold, clean water contentedly, anyway. 

Dean tossed the bucket out of the porthole again. And again. He didn't bother to track the time, though the height of the moon in the sky told him that he was working his way through his prime sleeping time. He muffled his yawns in his sleeve and kept drawing water until the basin was full and his arms were sore. 

"Better?" he said. 

Castiel replied, "Yes," and curled up under the water to go to sleep. 

Dean fell into bed. He was asleep before he even hit the mattress. Less than an hour later, the bell rang for the watch change. Dean rolled back out of bed, put on his boots and his coat, and went out to take his shift. 

From under the water, Castiel silently watched him go. 

\-----

"What is this?" said Castiel, leaning over the side of the basin to inspect the handkerchief on the floor. Wrapped up in the handkerchief were a hard tack biscuit and a chunk of salt pork. 

"It's food," said Dean, gnawing on his own biscuit. "You eat it." 

Castiel delicately wrapped the end of a tentacle around the biscuit, picked it up, and sniffed it. 

"Come on, man, you haven't eaten in days. Aren't you hungry?" said Dean around a mouthful of biscuit. 

"Yes," said Castiel. "But I'm not completely convinced that this is actually edible." 

Dean had almost taken an extra ration for Castiel out of storage, but in the end his conscience had gotten the better of him. Who was he to steal from his crew's food stores? So he had wrapped half of his own ration up in a handkerchief and saved it for Castiel. He had even given away his goddamn pork, which was the only thing to eat onboard that had any kind of flavor. Now the pit of his stomach felt hollow, and there was Castiel sniffing his food with a frown as if he thought it might bite back if he tried to eat it. 

Dean swallowed the last of his biscuit and stared at the pork by Castiel's basin. "Are you gonna eat it, or what?" 

Castiel took a couple of nibbles of the biscuit. His face flattened out as if he'd just swallowed sand. When he took a bite of the salt pork, his eyebrows twitched upwards and he said, "This actually isn't so bad," but he could only get through a quarter of it before the taste overwhelmed him and he had to put it back down. He lifted one tentacle out of the water and used it to push the handkerchief and its remaining contents across the floor towards Dean's feet. "Have it," he said despondently. 

As Dean devoured what remained of the food, he said in between bites, "You gotta eat something."

"Don't you have any fresh fish?"

Dean shrugged. "We have dried fish."

"Everything in this place is dry," Castiel pouted. 

He had a point. The biscuits were so dry that Dean's mouth felt like cotton after chewing through half of one. He swallowed the last bite whole to avoid having to work up enough saliva to dissolve it. "Yeah. Problem is, the only water we've got around here is the open ocean and the bilge." It took him a few seconds, but then he perked up with a, "Oh! Dude, I've got an idea."

"What is it?" said Castiel, but Dean was already on his way out the door. 

Half the crew was below decks, enjoying their dinner. Anna was commanding the other half. The work was as minimal as it possibly could be on a sailing ship – the wind was with them, the sea was calm, the weather was fair, and they all knew the route well. Anna almost looked bored until Dean sidled up to her saying, "Hey, wanna help me do something stupid?" 

"Yes," she said without hesitation. Her shoulders drooped under the weight of long-suffering acceptance. "But only because if I say no, you'll just get someone else to help you, and they won't keep as good an eye on you as I will."

"Great," said Dean, ignoring her lack of enthusiasm. "I need you to make me a rope harness."

Now Anna looked interested. "Don't you think we should wait until tonight, when we have some privacy?" she said, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards. 

"Nice thought," said Dean with a wink. "But I said we're doing something stupid, not something sexy."

"How stupid?"

Dean told her. 

Anna covered her eyes with her hand. "I'll get some rope," she said. She had long since learned that there was no point in arguing with him. She knotted him into a harness – crossing the ropes around his hips, between his legs, under his arms, and over his shoulders – and took hold of the free end of the rope that was attached to the final knot just above his belly button. Dean started climbing over the edge of the railing and rappelling down the side of the ship as Anna muttered, "This really is incredibly stupid."

"Just hold on to the rope, okay?" Dean shouted as he dropped below the level of deck. His feet were planted against the hull of the ship, but his weight was resting on the harness. He shuffled his feet to keep himself steady as he neared the water. There, in the trough of each wave, he could see dark patches on the wood below the water line. Wherever the paint had chipped away or worn through, sea life was clinging to The Impala. Scum and slime, tiny plants, but also, farther down, mussels and barnacles that were just big enough to be worth eating. It was a crying shame that Dean had let his ship get into such poor condition, and he meant to give her a good scrub and a re-paint as soon as he had the time and money. But in the meantime, he had a supply of shellfish readily available. All he had to do to get at them was risk drowning. Again.

Anna played slack out into the rope as Dean walked his way downwards. "I _am_ holding onto the rope," she sighed, and Dean grinned up at her. 

Soon the waves were lapping over his shoes. He kept going until he could reach the bigger mussels, until he was hips-deep in water. The sea was calm and the day was warm, but the water was still chilly and choppy enough that he would have trouble keeping his head in the air if he were to fall in completely. He glanced up. The rope that held him disappeared over the railing, the angle of it pulled taut by his weight. He couldn't see Anna anymore, but he knew she wouldn't let him fall. 

Prying mussels off of wood was harder than he expected. He cursed every time he sliced his fingers on their edges, and he cursed louder every time they came free with a sliver of his ship still attached to their sticky little feet. Slowly, his pockets filled with them until they were bulging. 

"Aren't you done yet?" Anna called down to him. 

Dean yanked one more mussel off the hull, stuffed it in his pocket, and began climbing the rope back up to the deck. Anna's arms were beginning to shake, but she didn't loosen her grip until Dean was safely back over the railing. 

They had drawn a bit of a crowd while Dean was down there. Every sailor who didn't have anything pressing to do had gathered to watch Dean curiously. Now they huddled around him where he sat on the deck, dripping wet from his armpits down, shellfish spilling out of his pockets. 

"What are those for?" someone asked. 

Dean shrugged. "Just wanted something to eat that hadn't been sitting in the hold for weeks."

Anna picked up a mussel from the deck by Dean's hip. "I know the feeling," she said as she inserted her thumbnails between the two halves of the shell. As if it were the easiest thing in the world, she pried the thing open and slurped the chewy, juicy organs out like she was slurping soup out of a spoon. 

"Oh God," said Dean, barely holding back a gag. "I was gonna cook them first!" 

"Why?" said Anna as she picked up three more and walked away, eating them one by one. 

Dean replaced the rest of the spilled mussels in his pockets. He milled around the deck until the crew lost interest in his latest escapade and went back to work. Only when he was sure he wasn't being scrutinized did he slink back to his room. 

Cas's head was resting on the edge of the basin, watching the door. When Dean came in, he said, alarmed, "Why are you all wet?" 

Dean beamed. "Got you something," he said, just before he leaned over the edge of the basin and turned his pockets inside out. Dozens of mussels plopped into the water. 

"Where did you get these?" said Castiel, picking one of the bigger ones up and inspecting it. 

Dean flopped onto the bed and turned so that he could enjoy the expression on Castiel's face. "Had 'em all along," he said. "I was holding out on you."

"Why do you resort to obvious lies in order to highlight absurdity and avoid answering questions?" 

"It's called sarcasm, Cas."

"I know what sarcasm is." Castiel squinted at the mussel, then at Dean. "You didn't put yourself in any danger to acquire these, did you?"

"Eh, not much," said Dean. 

Castiel inserted his thumbnails between the two halves of the shell, pried it open, and sucked out the organs hungrily. Dean couldn't keep from pulling a face, but Castiel's contented smile kept him from being too grossed out. 

"Thank you," said Castiel. 

A prickle of warmth spread from Dean's cheeks down to his chest. "No problem," he replied.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam chats with Bobby, and Dean contemplates telling his crew about Cas.

Heavy clouds hung suspended above Stanford. The road that led from town out to Singer's salvage yard was awash in gray. When Sam reached Bobby's shack and knocked on the door, the first raindrops were beginning to fall. 

Whether because it was still light out, or because he was expecting the visit, Bobby answered the door sans firearm. "What do you want?" 

"The other night made me think," said Sam, shuffling his feet. "I don't come to see you often enough."

"You're damn right. But what do you _want_?"

Sam stared, then thought, then sighed. "I want to talk about Dean," he said. 

"That's what I thought," said Bobby, opening the door wide. 

Chairs ranging from spindly to overstuffed were nestled between stacks of books and seafaring souvenirs. Sam found a seat that looked comfortable and took it after moving a dirty plate, a book of ancient runes, and three enormous fishhooks off of it. 

Bobby joined him with two mugs of a strong-smelling liquid. Sam declined. Bobby downed his in two gulps. "So you want to whine about how your brother didn't stick around to be your best man?" he said with trepidation. 

"No," said Sam. "I know he's going to Cuba on Crowley's orders. And I have an idea of the kind of shit he'd be in if he had delayed."

Bobby looked impressed, in spite of himself. "How'd you figure that?" 

"I'm not an idiot," said Sam. 

Bobby barked a laugh. "I forget that sometimes. Okay, what do you want to me to do about it?" 

Sam rested his forehead on his hands. "Nothing. I want to know what _I_ should do about it." 

"Meaning?" 

"Do you think it'd make a difference if I went back?" 

Bobby set his mug down on a side table where it immediately disappeared into a crowd of similar mugs that had never been put away. "What, you mean sling the life you built here by the side of the road like it meant nothing? Leave your girl? Leave your work? Leave Stanford? Go be a crook with your brother, working against a debt you're never gonna pay off if you live a hundred years? Which you won't. You won't live twenty. You won't live ten. I'll be honest, you probably won't even live long enough to see Jess marry someone else." 

Sam gulped. "Yeah, that's what I mean," he said.

"Sure, it'd make a difference. It'd make all the difference in the world." Sam almost despaired before Bobby added, "It'd break Dean's damn heart, is the difference it'd make."

"Huh?" 

Bobby stood up and loomed over Sam, shaking a finger in his face. "You're out, Sam. And if you love your brother, you'll stay out." 

"I can help him," Sam protested. 

"Let me explain something to you," said Bobby as he made his way back through the maze of books and chairs to where he had left the rest of his booze. He poured himself another glass and said in between swigs, "This life you have right now, your job, the opportunity to meet someone you want to spend the rest of your life with... Dean bought you that. Dean stayed in so you could get out."

"You think I don't know that?"

"Do you?" Bobby snapped. "Then why the Hell do you think it'd do a lick of good for you to throw away the gift he gave you? Do you think he'd feel better knowing that he'd screwed up bad enough that you had to give up everything to go bail him out? As far as he's concerned, getting you out of the life was the best thing he ever did. Don't you dare take that away from him. And whether you think so or not, you deserve every ounce of happiness that you’ve found here. Don't you dare take _this_..." And here Bobby gestured with his glass in the general direction of Stanford. "...away from yourself."

The mug of grog that Sam had turned down was still sitting on the armrest of his chair. Reluctantly, he picked it up and took a sip. "So I'm supposed to just leave Dean to face Crowley on his own? What if he's in over his head?"

"Dean lives every day of his life in over his head," said Bobby. "But if it ever looks like he's not gonna come back up again, I'll be the first to dive in after him."

"You'll be the second," Sam corrected him with a faint smile. 

"Technically, that fish kid beat us both to it."

Sam's smile slipped into a frustrated grimace, and he took another drink. "I don't know what to think about Castiel."

"I don't trust him," said Bobby quickly. 

"You don't trust anybody," Sam laughed. Then he pointed out, "He saved Dean's life."

Bobby noticed that Sam's mug was getting low, so he poured him some more. Sam let him. "Don't get romantic on me, Sam," said Bobby. "No one saves anyone's life who doesn't have a good reason for it."

\-----

Dean entered his cabin to find Cas hanging half-out of his basin, his chest against the rim, his elbows propped on Dean's bed. A few of his tentacles were poking above the water and waving absentmindedly, like a foot tapping in the air. He was holding Dean's copy of _Frankenstein_ gingerly between his fingers. Every few seconds, he flipped the page and stared at the words intently. 

"Can you even read?" said Dean. 

Cas didn't take his eyes off the book. Flipping another page, he said, "It has pictures in it, too."

"You must think it's a really fucked-up story if you're just going by the pictures," Dean laughed. As he shucked his shoes and coat, he almost warned Cas not to get the book wet. Then he looked again at how careful Cas was already being to keep the paper away from the water, and he let it slide. 

"I admit that I am perplexed," said Cas, flipping past several pages to get to the next illustration. It was an etching of the monster standing over the limp body of a young boy. 

Dean tapped the side of the basin with his foot. "I'll tell you about it later," he said. "Now hop out, I gotta change your water."

Cas pulled from one side, and Dean lifted from the other, and together they slowly poured the stale water out of the basin. Dean had worried that dumping and refilling the thing every day would eventually flood his room, but the water seemed to find its way across the deck and through the wood just as rain and storm water would, eventually trickling uneventfully down to the bilge. 

Cas sloshed through the quickly-disappearing water and crawled up on Dean's bed to curl back up with the book. He had taken to perching on Dean's bed in the evening, when his basin was unavailable. Dean found that he couldn't complain, not even when Cas's tentacles left slimy slicks on his sheets. It was worth it to see Cas propped up on one elbow, one hip jutting in the air, looking like a painting. Even his tentacles, which were usually a dark reddish-brown and textured like gravel, smoothed out and took on a bluish hue when he lounged among the blankets. 

As Dean drew water up to refill the tub, Cas thumbed through a few more pages. But he soon gave up with a frustrated sigh and put the book aside. He scooted over to the edge of the bed, as close to Dean as he could get. "Does the large human really kill the young human boy?" he asked. 

"What?" said Dean. He dumped another bucketful of water into the basin, then, "Oh! You mean the monster? Yeah, he kills the kid."

Cas flipped back through the book until he found the illustration again. He peered at the artist's rendition of a hulking beast, veins popping, limbs disproportionate, face disfigured. "Is it meant to be a monster?" 

"That's what they call him in the book," said Dean. 

Cas scooted even closer, until he had to wind one of his tentacles around the opposite leg of the bed to anchor himself lest he fall off. "Will you tell me the whole story?" 

Dean chuckled as he thought about it. "Aw, Cas," he said. "I don't know if I remember everything that happens in it..."

Cas thrust the book in his face. "Then read it to me."

"I can't read and haul water at the same time."

Before Dean could chuck the bucket out the porthole again, one of Cas's tentacles snapped out to grab it. His skin rippled as dozens of suckers engaged, holding the bucket effortlessly. "I'll draw the water," he said. "You read to me."

Dean let go of the bucket reluctantly. "You sure? You're still hurt, and it's pretty heavy." 

The look that Cas gave him could have peeled paint. "I am more than capable of lifting a bucket of water." 

Dean surrendered with a nod, and took Cas's place on the bed. He picked up _Frankenstein_ and thumbed back through to the title page. 

At first, Cas sat on the floor and tried to pull the rope at an angle over the sill of the porthole. But he quickly realized that the extra friction was making his job harder than it needed to be. His tentacles puffed up and darkened with frustration. Dean didn't offer any suggestions. He just watched as Cas silently appraised the situation. Finally, Cas tentatively reached up toward the porthole cover – a circular window of iron and thick glass that stood open, swung inward. Cas attached his suckers to the glass and tested his weight against it. Then, when he was sure it would hold him, he wrapped four tentacles around its circumference and lifted himself off the ground. He wobbled, and Dean almost lurched forward to catch him, but soon he managed to attach all of his tentacles to the glass, the iron, or the wooden wall around. His suckers held tight, and his tentacles became firm with the effort. 

From his new, higher angle, Cas pulled up the bucket of water easily. He emptied it into the basin. 

Dean was so busy staring at the tentacled body plastered to his wall, lean arms pulling rope hand over hand, that he forgot that he was still holding a book. 

When Cas caught Dean staring, his tentacles blushed blue. "Dean?" he said. 

"Right," said Dean, clearing his throat as he lowered his eyes to the book and tried to stop wondering what else those tentacles could do if they were strong enough to hold a man in the air. "Uh, I gotta warn you. It's not a nice story."

"Just read it, Dean," said Castiel as he raised and dumped out another bucket. 

"Okay. Um, yeah okay. I remember this now. It starts out with this guy Walton writing a letter to his sister. So this is Walton talking now: 'You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking...'"

Cas kept his eyes on his work, pulling the bucket up again and again until his basin was full. With every twist of the story, with every change of intonation in Dean's voice, colors and textures washed over his skin like waves. 

\-----

Dean had never been terribly good at keeping secrets. He could smirk and charm his way around them, but eventually he was always found out. Part of it was self-sabotage, he was sure. After all, knowing something that no one else knows is a lonely feeling, and Dean never did well with loneliness. 

He tried to tell himself that it would all be over in another week or two. He would drop Cas back off north of Stanford, and he would never have to worry about keeping a secret this big from his crew again. But still, every time someone addressed him or asked him a question, he had to bite his tongue to keep from answering, "There's a merman living in my cabin. He's been there for over a week now. He'd actually be really hot if he had legs instead of tentacles."

"Cas?" said Dean that evening, passing him half of their ration of salt pork. 

Cas had finally developed a taste for the stuff. He swished his way across his little basin to take it from Dean's hand. "Yes?" he said. 

"What do you figure would happen if my crew found out you were here?" 

Cas had just taken a bite, but at Dean's words he stopped chewing abruptly. He squinted at Dean. He swallowed. "Well," he said slowly. "They'd kill me, wouldn't they?" 

"Oh," said Dean with a gulp. "Yeah, well. I guess. I mean... would they really?" 

"Of course they would," said Cas without hesitation. "If you allow yourself to be seen by humans, they will pursue you until they catch you, and then they will kill you. Every mer-child knows that." 

"Funny," said Dean softly as he tried to work through the idea of humans as fabled murder-monsters. "I heard some pretty nasty stories about merfolk when I was a kid, too. About how you sabotage ships so they sink when they reach the open water. They say if you see a mer-person around your boat, you're better off burning it than sailing in it again."

"The difference is," Cas huffed, "our stories are true."

Dean gave a wry little laugh. "You telling me one of your kind never sank a ship?" 

Cas pressed his lips together and looked sideways. "I'm sure there have been incidents," he admitted. "But it's not as if we're all on a ship-sinking crusade." 

Dean spread his arms wide. "And you've been sharing a room with a human for this long, and you're not dead yet. Maybe the stories we heard were a little overblown."

They ate in uncomfortable silence for a while. 

Then Dean ventured, "Why'd you sink our ships, anyway?"

"I didn't sink anyone's ships," Cas snapped. "But I've heard of it being done when your shipping routes interfered with our homes." A pause. Then, "Why do you kill us on sight?" 

"I never killed anyone," said Dean. "No merfolk, that is. But I guess people do it... aw, fuck. Cause they're scared? Cause they don't know what they're looking at and they're too stupid to do anything but shoot it?"

"But you _hunt_ us," Cas insisted.

Dean took a big bite to buy himself time to put his words together. "Yeah, well, there are other stories. Some old-timers say that you can earn fair winds for the rest of your life by eating a mermaid's heart."

"Her heart?" said Cas, horrified.

"Hers or his. I don't think gender matters a ton. And it's not the heart in all the stories. Sometimes they say you have to drink the blood. And, like, other organs are supposed to do other things, like give you powers or whatever." Cas's face looked more and more stricken, so Dean added, "It's bullshit. No one really believes it." 

"You don't have to believe it to profit from it," Cas pointed out. "If you killed me and cut me into pieces, and one of these old-timers were willing to pay, how much could you sell me for?"

 _Enough to get out of debt,_ Dean thought. But what he said was, "I would never do that," and he meant it. 

"My deepest gratitude," Cas deadpanned. "And are all your crew as honorable as you are?" 

"I wouldn't call them honorable, but they wouldn't kill you just to make a buck," Dean muttered ruefully. Then he brightened, saying, "My first mate, though. She's the honorable one. She'd keep your secret. I mean, if you let me tell her. You can trust her."

"I don't think you understand, Dean," said Cas, munching on his pork, his voice deceptively calm. "I don't trust _you_."

\-----

Dean saw it coming before Anna even opened her mouth. He recognized her smug smile, her graceful way of meandering across the deck towards him. The way she sidled up to him so that he could feel the cushion of her hip against his side. 

"I'll meet you in your room tonight," she whispered. "Be ready for me."

Her voice – the tone of it, the words, the promise behind them – it went straight to his crotch, as effectively as if she'd stuck her hand down his trousers and squeezed. What she was offering him was exactly what he had been needing. A release. A surrender. A chance to let go of the anxiety and paranoia that had accompanied him on this trip – not due only to Cas's presence, but also to Crowley's looming influence. He was a bundle of nerves, and Anna knew exactly how to smooth him out. 

So it almost physically pained him to have to say, "Sorry, I can't. I mean... some other time, definitely. I'm just not feeling it right now."

"Oh." The assured, commanding tone dropped out of her voice with a thud. She pulled away from him, increasing the distance between them from intimate to social. 

"Sorry."

Anna shook her head vehemently. "There's no need to be sorry. It's just... hm. Right when I thought I was getting good at reading you."

As she walked away, for one desperate second Dean contemplated whether she would notice if he were to turn the basin of water over and hide Cas underneath it. For another second he wondered just how mad Cas would be if he were to bring Anna back to the cabin and explain that he'd had to betray Cas's confidence in the interest of kinky sex. 

In the next second she was gone, back to her duties as if nothing had happened, and it was too late to change his mind. 

He still had fifteen minutes left before his shift ended, but he stomped back to his cabin anyway. Everything was under control on deck. And he wouldn't be much use to anyone in the mood he was in now. 

Cas was reclining against the edge of his basin, his tentacles draped over the side. When Dean slammed the door open, he flinched so badly that the skin of his tentacles bunched up into little ruffles and turned blood-red. But they relaxed back into a glossy brown as soon as Cas recognized Dean. "Good evening," he said. 

Dean answered with a grunt. He clambered across the room and over the edge of the basin to his bed, unbuttoning his trousers as he went, and flopped onto his mattress. He seethed and grumbled the whole way. 

"Are... you well?" Cas asked. He looked concerned. Not least because of Dean's crabby demeanor, but also because Dean was currently rolling onto his back and shuffling his trousers down around his knees to reveal his semi-hard cock. Cas had seen Dean in various states of undress before, of course, but he had never seen Dean take himself in his own hand with a purpose. And he seemed to immediately comprehend the difference. 

His hand wrapped around the base of his cock, Dean turned to Cas with a sigh. Somehow, even that piercing stare wasn't doing anything to kill his libido. If anything, he was getting harder. He must have been even hornier than he'd thought. "Look," he said. "I need to blow off some steam. You don't mind, do you?" 

"Not at all." Cas looked left, then right, then stared directly and curiously at Dean's cock as it nudged its way out of his foreskin. "Would... would you like me to face the wall? Or something?" 

Dean blew out a frustrated burst of air. "Christ, Cas, I don't fucking care," he said as he began to jerk himself off. 

At first, when he closed his eyes and began to work his wrist up and down rhythmically, he thought of Anna and all the terrible, wonderful things she might have done to him if he had taken her up on her invitation. Tests of endurance. Loving commands. Sweet rewards. That highly-polished wooden phallus with the flared base that she sometimes strapped to her pelvis with leather bands and paraded in front of him, making him beg before finally fucking him with it. 

But as a lightness gripped his chest and a heaviness settled into his pelvis, as his hand jerked more and more frantically, as he began to pant out quiet little breaths to mask the deep moans he wished he could let out... he also found himself thinking of a cold embrace. Of smooth, slick limbs sliding over his skin to bind him as strong as rope and as gentle as holding hands. Of suckers attaching to his chest and thighs and the base of his cock, drawing the orgasm out of him. 

Of being filled with strange appendages while kissing a familiar mouth. 

When he came, his throat tight and his teeth gritted, he was careful, very careful, not to let his eyes slide over to where Cas was sitting, sloshing quietly in his water. But he had a feeling that Cas was not facing the wall. 

\-----

The night was dark, and even the chilly breeze off the ocean couldn't mask the faint mugginess in the air. They were nearing the Caribbean. Soon they would be off the safety of their sailing home and back into the thicket of swindlers and thieves that made up their dangerous line of work. 

But instead of worrying about what they were going to do once they got to Havana, Anna was busy trying, and failing, to remember the last time Dean Winchester had turned her down for sex. Dean never turned _anyone_ down for sex. Especially not Anna. Especially not at a time like this, with the stress of the job and Crowley's threats hanging over him, when his need for distraction should have been at an all-time high. 

The bell for the change of watch broke her out of her reverie. As she handed over the wheel to the next batch of crew, she shook her head and smiled. Maybe her preoccupation with Dean's rebuttal had less to do with her concern with Dean and more to do with her own frustration, her own need for release. She let it go. There were more important things to worry about. 

Instead of descending to her barracks, Anna wobbled her way sleepily to Dean's door. Sex wasn't in the cards tonight, but that didn't mean she couldn't snuggle up beside him for a while. 

The door handle wouldn't turn. She jiggled it, trying to unstick it, and it took her several seconds to realize that it was locked. She stood back and stared at the door. She tried the handle one more time. 

Dean's door was never locked. 

As she stood in confused silence, just before she turned and tip-toed back to her own bed, she thought she heard the sound of water sloshing on the other side of the door. 

\-----

When Dean stepped out of his room the next morning, he was met by a small band of his crewmates. They stood in a semi-circle around his doorframe, staring him down and blocking his path. Dean slid out from behind the door and closed it behind him. He was careful never to open it far enough to expose Cas to the prying, waiting eyes. 

"Can I help you with something?" said Dean brightly, though a note of warning growled in the undertones of his voice. 

One man stepped forward. He had been on Dean's crew for a couple of months, but he was still new enough that Dean had to pause to remember his name – Creedy. By his swagger, and by the way everyone else in the little circle looked the slightest bit sheepish, Creedy seemed to be the mastermind of this little ambush. "You're keeping your door locked now?" he said.

"You got a problem with that?" 

Creedy shook his head. "Your door is always open. You made a point of that when you hired me. Any man, no matter how lowly, can come into the captain's quarters and make himself heard. You going back on that policy?" 

"I'll still listen to anything you have to say," said Dean. "But I'm enjoying a little bit of privacy on this trip. It's nothing to worry yourself about."

Creedy stepped forward, invading Dean's space. "Do I look worried to you?" 

One of the other crew members piped up, "We're not accusing you of anything, Cap. It's just... why the change? You got something to hide?" 

Dean glared them all down. "It sure sounds like you're accusing me of something."

"Exactly what kind of deal did you make with Crowley down there in The Inferno?" Creedy sneered. "Did he give you a nice bonus for you to ferret away for yourself?" 

"Crowley didn't give me anything but sass and specs on the next job," said Dean evenly, measured. "You're out of line. You need to stand the fuck down."

But Creedy kept pushing. "Show us inside, if you've got nothing to hide."

And even though Dean did have something to hide, he felt his blood boil with anger rather than fear. "I'm the captain of this goddamn ship," he hissed. "I'm the one who pays you, even when that means going hungry myself or letting my ship fall the fuck apart because she needs repairs that I can't afford. Even when it means getting in deeper with Crowley, I take care of all of you first. There's nothing behind this door that any of you have any claim over. And you'd better believe that, because I'd say you owe me the benefit of the fucking doubt."

That was enough to make almost every crew member present lower their eyes in embarrassment and take a few steps back. There was a path for Dean to escape now, but he stood fast, guarding his door. Creedy hadn't noticed that the support had fallen out from under him. He still stood up to Dean like he had something to prove. 

"Just let me take a look..." He reached past Dean and put his hand on the doorknob. 

At first Dean thought the metallic _click_ was his door opening. Then he belatedly realized that he had drawn his pistol and was pointing it at Creedy's face. 

"I told you to stand down," said Dean in a voice that he didn't recognize. 

Creedy took his hand off of Dean's door. 

Dean blazed a glare down on Creedy, who would not meet his eyes. Then he turned his gaze on each person still standing in front of him. They all looked away, too. "Get to work," he said softly, and everyone obeyed. 

He stopped Creedy with a hand on his shoulder before he could escape. "When we hit Havana," said Dean, "I want you off my ship. And don't come back." 

Creedy went a little pale. "How am I supposed to get back to the States?" 

"You can swim, for all I care." 

Dean waited until Creedy and everyone else was well out of sight before he slipped back into his room, leaned against the door, and gave such a sigh of relief that it shook his body. He had pointed a lot of guns at a lot of people in his life, but he had never drawn on his own crew, and he had hoped never to have to. Now his hands were shaking so badly that it was all he could do to get the pistol back in its holster. 

"Dean?" Cas was leaning with the heels of his hands on the edge of his basin, ear cocked to the door and straining to hear what was happening outside. 

"It's okay. I got rid of them," said Dean. Then, after a hard swallow and a humorless chuckle, "You were right, weren't you? If Creedy had had his way, they would have killed you."

Cas lifted his right hand and stretched it out to Dean, palm cupped inward. And though Dean couldn't tell it if was an invitation to a hug or a handshake or... whatever... he found himself drawn irresistibly forward. He staggered one step, then two. Cas's hand hovered just in front of him. But he couldn't quite make himself take that last step to turn the motion into an embrace. He stopped just shy, and kneeled. 

Because Cas couldn't reach to put his arm around Dean, he settled for gripping his shoulder. Just a single point of contact, but so strong that Dean felt as though Cas's fingers were searing an imprint onto him. 

His eyes burned into Dean too, radiant, and beaming with something like gratitude.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean has a night out. Cas has a night in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW, I'm sorry for the frankly ridiculous update delay. Unfortunately vet school often means coming home and saying to myself, "Well, I have enough time to either write, or make dinner, or take a shower. And I haven't eaten all day and I'm covered in poop." So I can't make promises about an update schedule. The only promise I can make is that I know where this story is going, I know how it ends, and I want to see it finished. Thanks to everyone who asked me about the next chapter and kept me writing. 
> 
> And a quick disclaimer: while Jean Lafitte was a real pirate, I played a bit fast and loose with his history and timeline in order to make things work the way I wanted them to work. Forgive me my historical inaccuracies.

They didn't bother keeping a low profile when they sailed into the port at Havana. It wasn't like at Stanford, where a strange ship stuck out like a broken thumb. Havana was a big enough place that even a distinctive ship like The Impala could edge in mostly unnoticed. And as for those who couldn't help but notice her, well, it wasn't as if Dean's crew were the only pirates in the harbor. The people of Havana understood that, while pirates might carry illegal cargo in and out of the city, they also paid for goods and services while they were there. A little money in the right hands and a low profile would allow them the run of the town, and the locals were happy to look the other way so as long as the crew didn't cause any trouble. 

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Anna called to Dean from where she was working in the rigging. 

Dean supposed it was. The city seethed with humanity, and the ships flowing in and out of the harbor were its lifeblood. West of the harbor, intricate architecture blossomed. Mansions. Theaters. A refined place for refined people. Beautiful. But Dean had never been a part of that world, and he could never cultivate more than a passing interest in it. He had more important things to worry about. 

He gathered up his crew once they were safely berthed in the Havana harbor, nestled among a garden of masts. The place swarmed like a hive, as it always did. The better to blend in. 

"Take the night off," he told his crew. "Have some fun for a change." After making sure they all knew when to meet back in the morning and assigning shifts for the night watch, he nodded to dismiss them. They didn't go. 

"Uh, Captain?" said one sailor, smiling hopefully. 

"Yeah, Rosen?" 

"Uh... we didn't get paid for the last job," she said, fidgeting. "Not that it was anyone's fault. But we're all a little light on coin and... it's _Havana_." The other sailors murmured in agreement. 

Dean closed his eyes for a split second. Crowley had given him enough money to pay for the goods he was to transport, plus a little extra as an emergency fund for the journey. So far they hadn't needed that money. But, knowing Dean's luck, it might come in very handy on the return trip if the boat sprung a leak or snapped a mast, or if they needed to pay someone off, or if any number of other complications were to arise. 

On the other hand, his crew were looking at him like baby birds waiting for him to puke a worm into their mouths. And it was true that they hadn't been paid in a good long while. 

"Line up," he said. "You all get an advance on your pay for this trip. Now, who's the best captain?" 

"You are!" they chorused as they shuffled into a single file. Even Anna said it, rolling her eyes fondly. 

At first it was nice to see his sailors' faces light up as he counted coins into their hands one by one. They quickly scuttled off toward town, their purses full for the first time in months. But Dean's purse steadily shrank, and as it weighed less and less on his hand it began to weigh more and more on his mind. Once again, he was going to find himself walking the knife's edge of destitution. So his smiling, "Okay, don't spend it all on rum," toward the front of the line slowly became a rueful, "Stay out of trouble," as the line dwindled down to the last few people and his purse dwindled down to the last few coins. 

Last in line was Creedy, slouching as if he could slip by unnoticed. After a moment of silence, Dean emptied out the rest of his purse and dropped the coins into Creedy's hand. It was much more than he had given anyone else. 

"What's this?" said Creedy unsurely. 

"Your back pay," said Dean. "Now get the Hell off my ship."

"You were serious about that?" 

"Did I look like I was joking?" 

Creedy looked like he might have thrown the coins back in Dean's face, but money was money and eventually he put it in his pocket. He slunk off the ship without another word. 

Only Dean and Anna were left on the deck. Anna stared Dean down with her arms crossed. "You gave him money," she observed, her voice dripping with judgment. 

"What was I supposed to do, leave him broke and stranded?" Dean wadded up his empty purse and put it away. 

"No. You should have shot him back when he disobeyed your orders," said Anna without hesitation.

"That's not how I run my ship."

Anna sighed and leaned wearily on the railing. "I know," she said. "Well, how much money do we have left?"

"After we pay for the shipment we're picking up for Crowley?" Dean pretended to count on his fingers. "Uh, zero. Zero money."

Anna placed one hand delicately over her eyes. "Wonderful," she muttered. 

Dean clapped a hand on her shoulder and did his best to smile. "Don't worry. We just need to finish the job before expenses start stacking up. I'll go into town tonight and see if I can track down Crowley's contact. With a little work I'll have the transfer set up by tomorrow night."

Anna had the first watch, so she stayed behind. Dean climbed down onto the dock and eased into the flow of sailors making their way to and from their ships on the narrow maze of wooden slats. 

He wound his way through a forest of ships as he made for solid ground. Most were bigger and newer than The Impala. Dean recognized merchant vessels, a smattering of Navy ships, and a handful of boats that tried to blend in but couldn't be anything else but fellow pirates. 

Then, halfway to shore, he turned a corner and stopped dead in his tracks. Sailors bumped into him and scooted around him like a river flowing around a rock, but he didn't mind and he didn't move. He just stared up at the hull of ship in front of him, where the words "Blood Chalice" were painted in blue and silver. 

Benny Lafitte was docked in Havana. 

\-----

Before the great pirate Jean Lafitte set up the smuggling hub at Barataria Bay and began to cultivate an infamy that would rival that of John Winchester, he was the lowly son of a widow from the French colony of Saint-Domingue. The two of them – mother and son – traveled to New Orleans in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Not much was known about Jean Lafitte's young adulthood there in the bayous, but Dean Winchester knew at least one thing: Jean met and spent several months courting a young woman named Elizabeth Munroe. 

The two parted ways, and for a few years after that Jean was kept busy. He sailed the gulf, making a name for himself, and even showed the first inklings of naval and criminal genius when he smuggled his own elder brother, Pierre, out of Saint-Domingue and out from under the noses of the Haitan revolutionaries there. By the time Jean became aware that Elizabeth had quietly borne and raised his son in the meantime, Benjamin Lafitte was nearly ten. 

Jean returned to Elizabeth and made her an offer. He couldn't afford to have his own illegitimate offspring running around the Caribbean, possibly to show up at his doorstep one day expecting recognition. And he certainly couldn't have Benny following his footsteps into the life of piracy, showing him up and sapping his reputation. So Jean offered Elizabeth a hefty sum of money if Benjamin Lafitte would henceforth be known only as Benjamin Munroe, and if he would promise to make his living on the land. 

Elizabeth, alone and destitute, made the promises and accepted the money. 

Ten years later, a young pirate captain was taking ships under the name of Benjamin Lafitte, anyway. 

\-----

Dean was almost buzzing in his skin as he tore his eyes away from the hull of the ship and flagged down a passing dock worker. The man rolled his eyes at the interruption, but he joined Dean under the prow of the Blood Chalice and listened as Dean asked, "Hey, can you help me out? I'm looking for Captain Lafitte." 

The man's eyes widened, his boredom suddenly banished. "I heard he was still up at Barataria..."

"Not that Lafitte," Dean cut him off. "His son. Captain Benjamin Lafitte."

"Oh," said the man, visibly relaxing. "Eh, I wouldn't know him if I saw him."

Dean muttered under his breath, "Figures," as he watched the dock man walk away. He probably hadn't recognized Dean, either, though he certainly would have known the name John Winchester. Sometimes anonymity was an advantage, but it could also be frustrating for Dean as a pirate captain to be less famous than his own last name. 

He made his way slowly into town, stopping someone every now and then to ask if they'd seen the Blood Chalice's captain. He chose his marks carefully; he picked the pirates and ruffians out of the crowd and avoided anyone who looked proper enough that they might be alarmed by the name "Lafitte." Most didn't know Benny. Some had seen him, but didn't know where he was. Finally, Dean was lucky enough to catch one of Benny's own crew members on his way into a bar. "The Captain's down the street at the Jubilee," the man said. 

The Jubilee Tavern was a smallish, comfortable place mostly frequented by locals. When Dean arrived, he could have easily picked the sole outsider even if he hadn't known him – Benny sat at the corner of the bar with his back to the wall, his thick blue coat stinking of the ocean and his scraggly beard picking up foam off his beer with every sip. His shoulders were like a crossbeam. His deep-set eyes picked up Dean's silhouette before he'd even fully opened the door, and when he recognized him those eyes crinkled at the edges in a way that warmed Dean's face even better than the Caribbean breeze. 

Dean sat down beside Benny and, without so much as a greeting, helped himself to a swallow of beer. "Do you have this much trouble finding me when you go into a town asking after Captain Winchester?"

A slow, easy smile spread across Benny's face to match the lines around his eyes. "Not really," he rumbled. "I think it helps that your daddy is dead instead of sitting on his spoils up in Louisiana." When he took his beer back and downed the last of it, he looked at Dean with such fondness that Dean felt something kindle deep in his chest. 

Dean couldn't help but match Benny's smile. "It's good to see you, man," he said, his voice dropping lower to keep from being overheard. "What brings you here?"

"Unloading some things," said Benny nonchalantly. "You?"

"Picking some things up."

"From whom?"

Dean breathed a sigh through his nose and said, "What do you say we hold off on talking shop for now? I just got here."

Benny rested a knowing hand on Dean's forearm and nodded. "You drinking?"

"If you're buying," Dean replied sheepishly. 

"You broke again?"

"'Again' implies that there was a time in between when I wasn't broke," said Dean. 

A scowl passed over Benny's face like a storm cloud. "You're bringing Crowley his dinner again and he's still got you eating table scraps," he growled. 

"I said I didn't want to talk about it, okay? Just buy me a drink, big guy."

One more worried glance, and the storm cloud evaporated. Benny was smiling again. "Whatever you want, sugar," he said. "I got you tonight."

"Promise?" slipped out of Dean's mouth, and they both blushed. Then they both cast furtive glances around the bar, making sure no one was taking notice of them. After all, they were both reasonably-well-known pirate captains trying to make a name for themselves. They had to keep up at least a semblance of professionalism instead of making eyes at each other like schoolboys whenever they happened to dock in the same port. 

No one was looking at them. Benny chuckled as he stood. "Let's start with that drink. Then we'll just see what I end up promising you," he murmured, leaning over the table to say it directly in Dean's ear. Dean tried to get his legs to stop vibrating as Benny sauntered over to the bar and came back with two pints. "So, what do you want to talk about, if business is off limits?"

_There's a merman living in my cabin!_

Dean swallowed the words down so hard that he almost squeaked. The urge to tell someone, anyone, was overwhelming, and Benny's open expression invited honesty. But Dean had promised. He wouldn't tell. 

But he had to talk about it or he'd burst, and Benny was just far enough removed from Dean's crew that he could do it without giving anything away. 

"Met a guy," Dean said. 

"Hmm," said Benny through a mouthful of beer. "Pirate? Smuggler? Fence?" 

"Nah, he's... I guess he's a civilian." Dean sipped on his beer without really tasting it. 

"How'd you manage to meet one of those?"

"He saved my life." When Dean noticed Benny's raised eyebrows, he added, "Don't make a thing out of it. I survived, okay?"

"I reckon I owe the guy one, then," said Benny. 

"Nah, I saved his life right back. So I think we're getting close to even."

"Sounds dramatic."

"It was at first," said Dean, staring into his beer. "Now it's just... huh. Benny, I was just so completely, hilariously unprepared for this guy."

Benny looked like he would have liked to say something, but he picked up his beer and drank instead, knitting his eyebrows at Dean from over the top of his glass. 

So Dean went on. "He's a huge inconvenience. A huge distraction. He... it's like I've had this one problem for years – Crowley, I mean. And I spend all my time trying to solve this problem. And then Cas comes along and suddenly there's this whole new problem to deal with. And he's the worst kind of problem because he makes me forget about the first problem, the real problem. When I'm with him I don't worry about Crowley or my debt or keeping my ship afloat. I just worry about him. And fuck, sometimes he even manages to make me forget that he's a problem, too. And then I'm not worried at all. I'm goddamn..."

"Happy?" Benny interrupted, looking amused.

" _Complacent_ ," said Dean, spitting the word out like a curse. 

Benny stared at him with his lips twisted into a resigned smile. "Honey, I know you hate it when people automatically assume you're sleeping with someone, but..." 

"Oh my God!" Dean sputtered around the last mouthful of his beer. "I'm not sleeping with him!" 

"I wouldn't be jealous if you were."

"I'm absolutely not sleeping with him," said Dean. "There are some, uh, pretty substantial reasons why I'm not sleeping with him. Moral and logistical and... anatomical... reasons..." 

Benny did the tiniest of double-takes. "Anatomical?"

"The point is I'm not sleeping with him."

"Okay," said Benny nonchalantly. Then, "So, his name is Cas?"

"I take it back. Let's talk about business," Dean groaned. 

Benny finished his beer with a slurp. "I've got a better idea," he said. "Let's talk about you and me heading back to my cabin for the night."

Feeling very glad that Benny hadn't suggested they go back to Dean's cabin instead, Dean replied, "I thought you'd never ask."

\-----

They didn't talk much as they left the Jubilee. They communicated in sidelong glances and stolen smiles as they waded against the tide of the evening crowd – everyone else was heading to the bars; Dean and Benny were going back to the docks. Dean didn't speak up again until the crowd had thinned out to a trickle and they could feel like they were somewhat alone. 

"What are you dropping off here?" 

Benny tilted his head with a grin. "Thought we weren't talking business."

"Come on, Benny, what did you score?" 

He shrugged, but Benny's persistent smile belied the fact that he'd had a good week. "Took a merchant ship coming out of the gulf," he said. "No fight in 'em. They surrendered after a couple of warning shots and I took their very reasonable offer of half their cargo."

Dean was always pleased when Benny's stories ended in no one getting killed. But he had to shake his head at the marvel that Benny was so well-off that he could afford to leave behind half the spoils of his conquest. "Time was, you would have taken all their cargo and their ship, too." 

Benny just shrugged again. "Sure, but then I would have had to tell you that I'd left their whole crew adrift in lifeboats, and you would have given me those eyes like I'd just stepped on a puppy. Besides, I don't need their ship. I've got a ship. It's a good ship. My father gave it to me."

Dean tripped over a cobblestone and almost fell. "What?" he choked. "Jean Lafitte gave you the Blood Chalice? I thought he hated your guts!" 

"I haven't told you about that?" said Benny, taking Dean's elbow and pulling him back upright. "He gave it to me in exchange for me promising not to use his name."

"Nah, he paid your mother for you not to use his name." Dean squinted, trying to remember the story. 

"He did that," said Benny. "Then, when I grew up and got a notion to try my hand at pirating, I tracked him down. Told him that he'd made a deal with my mother, not with me, and I'd go sailing if I wanted. He wasn't happy about it, but he understood. He just didn't want me running around claiming I was his blood. He'd just taken the Chalice a prize, and he offered her to me if I'd keep going by Munroe."

"So you took her," said Dean. He placed a hand over his eyes as he realized. "And kept using the name, anyway."

"I meant to keep my word," said Benny sheepishly. "But it didn't take long for people to figure out who I was. A few years in, everyone was calling me Lafitte. Seemed silly to keep introducing myself as anything else."

"Jesus," Dean whispered. "No wonder he put a bounty on you."

Now it was Benny's turn to stumble as they passed from the lane onto the docks. "You know about that?" 

"Well, yeah," said Dean, pausing to wait for Benny to regain his footing. "It's not like he broadcasts it, but by now most people know that if they get you up to Barataria then Jean will make it worth their while."

"Worth their while..." Benny chuckled darkly. He hesitated, then added, "You ever think about it?"

They'd just reached the Blood Chalice. Dean stopped and turned so that he was facing Benny, the two of them hidden in the shadow of the ship's hull. "You're worth more to me than anything he can pay."

Benny scoffed. "You know he's rich enough to make your debt with Crowley go away?"

"Like I said."

This time they didn't bother looking around to see if anyone was watching. Benny reached out, maybe just to put his hand on Dean's face, but Dean was already leaning in and soon their hands were all over, pulling their lips closer, crushing their bodies together. Dean could sink into Benny so easily. His coat swallowed him. His hands on the back of his head and between his shoulder blades were so strong and broad that it was like they could hold him up. 

The ship was almost deserted when they made their way up on deck. The sailor on the night watch reached for her pistol, then relaxed when she recognized her captain and his guest. Benny tipped his cap to her as he passed by, his arm around Dean's waist. 

Benny's cabin was nicer than Dean's. The room was bigger and better lit, as if Benny had actually cared to choose a room befitting his station when he picked out where he would sleep. But it wasn't gaudy or pretentious, like the quarters of some captains. The furniture was plain wood, the bed sheets were plain linen, and the predominant decoration was stacks of books. Much like its inhabitant, it was just on the comfortable side of spartan. 

Benny's arm slipped free of Dean's side as he strode into the room purposefully. He shed his clothes as he walked. His coat and shirt he unbuttoned with barely a thought, and shrugged them off with a tiny roll of his shoulders. They fell on the floor in a heap. He unbuckled his belt, and with a dip of his hips his trousers fell off his legs. He stepped out them, kicking his shoes off as he went. In three steps all his clothes had fallen away from him, as quickly as if nakedness were his natural state and he were merely returning to it. 

His shoulders, if possible, were even broader without the coat over them. His limbs were thick and his skin bronzed by the Caribbean sun. Once across the room, he pulled the chair out from his desk and spun it around so that it stood in the middle of the floor, facing Dean. Then he sat down, and Dean was reminded that Benny's kindness and warmth and genuineness aside, he also had the biggest cock that Dean had ever had the pleasure of fucking. 

Benny leaned back and spread his legs, affording Dean the best possible view from where he was still standing clothed and speechless in the doorway. Benny raised his hands and beckoned. "Come here," he said. 

Dean didn't have to be told twice. He kicked the door closed behind him and stripped. He was somewhat less graceful than Benny had been – his shirt got stuck halfway over his head and one trouser leg stubbornly refused to come off his ankle. Benny just watched with an amused smile on his face until Dean managed to get free.

"Shut up," said Dean. He stepped forward until he was standing over Benny, straddling his lap. Even without being touched, his cock was pulsing its way to hardness right in front of Benny's face. 

"I didn't say nothing," said Benny, leaning forward. In one smooth movement, he rolled a condom onto Dean's cock and lapped it into his mouth. He closed his lips around him as easily and casually as if he were kissing him. 

A jolt went through Dean's legs as he swelled against Benny's tongue, and he had to put his hands on Benny's shoulders to steady himself. Benny's rough hands ran up the backs of his thighs and gripped his buttocks to draw him in closer until Benny's nose was brushing the hairs at Dean's groin. He held him there a moment, deep enough that he couldn't breathe, his eyes closed as he savored the taste and sensation of Dean in his mouth and in his hands. 

Benny fucked with such a warm familiarity. Even from the first time, it had always been as if their bodies had known each other, known how to fit together and give each other pleasure. There was no pretention to the man and no hesitation. He sucked Dean's cock like it belonged in his mouth, and he cherished Dean's body like a gift. 

At first Benny's eyes kept flicking upwards to watch as Dean's face went slack and dreamy. Only when he was satisfied that Dean was enjoying himself did he close his eyes. Dean's eyes fluttered shut too, his fingers kneading at the thick muscle where Benny's shoulders met his neck and creeping up to toy with the soft hair at his nape. He pressed with two fingers at the base of Benny's skull, softly, just barely asking for more. 

Benny answered by letting go of Dean with one hand and reaching behind himself toward the desk. There was a little pot of oil there; Benny flipped the lid off with practiced ease and dipped his fingers into it. 

Dean didn't bother holding back a breathy sigh of pleasure as Benny worked his slippery fingers between the cheeks of Dean's ass to rest against his hole. He traced tiny circles there, spreading the oil around and coaxing Dean open. He'd stopped sucking. Dean's cock rested atop his lower lip, twitching each time his fingers probed a little deeper. 

Before entering him, Benny lifted his eyes and quirked his eyebrows, asking silent permission. Dean nodded so hard that his dick bobbed up and down against Benny's mouth. 

First one finger, then two, as easy as anything. With a wicked, open-mouthed grin, Benny crooked his fingers and pulled Dean toward him, drawing Dean's cock deeper into his mouth by the pressure on Dean's prostate. Dean had to collapse forward, his hands braced against the desk behind the chair, his mouth gaping and gasping. Benny tugged insistently, rhythmically, and soon Dean's hips were working to keep up with him, thrusting in and out of his mouth as Benny's head rested lazily against the chair back. 

He pushed and pulled, and sucked, the pressure of it so intense that Dean barely noticed when he slipped a third finger in beside the first two. It was all he could do to follow the motion of Benny's hand, trying to match the pace even as his legs trembled and he clenched around Benny's fingers with the effort and pleasure of it. 

When Benny pulled him all the way in, Dean's balls resting against his beard, and kept pulling with his fingers curved wickedly against Dean's prostate, Dean could help but let out a moan that was higher-pitched than he'd meant it to be. And Benny, that bastard – Dean could actually feel him smiling around his mouthful at the noises he was teasing out of Dean. 

Dean's hand scrabbled over the surface of the desk, working behind Benny's back to find the little drawer on the far right where he knew the rest of his condoms were hidden. When he finally found what he was looking for, he reluctantly backed off of Benny's fingers, out of his mouth, to kneel between his legs and slide the condom on. And, fuck, it was bigger than he remembered. He could barely get his fingers around it. He ended up having to use both hands to unroll the condom past the bulging mushroom-shaped head and down the thick, veiny shaft that was getting harder with every touch. 

"Do you have to jack off with two hands?" said Dean with a smirk as he grabbed the pot of oil and poured some over Benny's cock. 

Benny gave a pleased little grunt as Dean smeared the oil around. "Don't need to. I can usually find someone to do that for me." Then, as Dean stood to straddle his lap again, he added, "You good like this? You don't wanna move it to the bed?"

"Nah, this is good." He bent his knees slowly, bracing himself with one hand behind Benny's neck as he lowered himself down. With his other hand he guided the slippery rod between the cheeks of his ass until the tip of it was poking at his opening. He felt so loose, so ready, but he could also feel Benny's girth pressing outward against his cheeks and reminding him of how tight a fit it could be. He mumbled, face flushing, "You remember, right?"

Benny nodded seriously and cupped Dean's face in his hands. "Yeah, I know. I don't thrust up, I don't push you down. I don't move. You go your own pace."

"Thanks."

"You don't need to thank me for not hurting you."

It was going to hurt no matter what. But that was part of it. As Dean bent his legs farther, letting his weight settle, letting Benny's cock prod deeper until the head of it was nosing its way inside and stretching him open as it went, he quickly reached the limits of his comfort and pushed through into a warm, stinging pain. He sobbed out a laugh as the flared head slid past his sphincter. It hurt. But he was riding the edge of his own limits, and he was in control. Benny was all warmth and security, a gentle bear of a man, and Dean ached to be wrapped up in him, to press himself against him and invite him deep inside. And that was worth a little pain. In fact, the pain made it better. So Dean sat down into Benny's lap inch by inch, panting and straining, willing himself open. 

Benny's hands came up to rest on Dean's hips, but true to his word he didn't push Dean in any direction. He just rubbed little comforting circles on Dean's flanks with his fingertips. The calmness of his hands was at odds with the tension in his face – he breathed through gritted teeth and stared into Dean's eyes with a wildness brought on by overwhelming pleasure, the muscles of his neck fluttering with the effort to keep his body still. But his hands moved smoothly to stroke up and down Dean's back, loving every inch of his skin that they could reach. 

By the time Dean's butt settled flush against Benny's pelvis and thighs, Dean was collapsed against Benny's shoulder, shaking, each breath a reedy little sigh. Benny turned his head and kissed him. Dean did his best to participate, but his mouth couldn't do much more than gape and gasp at the overwhelming sensation of fullness that was gripping his whole body. Benny sucked at his lips and kissed his way across Dean's cheeks anyway. By the time he'd made his way down Dean's neck and was nipping at his collarbones, Dean had planted his feet back on the floor and was slowly rolling his hips up and down, impaling himself on Benny's huge cock again and again. 

Soon it was Benny who was coming apart, and Dean who was kissing back savagely. The more the pain ebbed the faster he went. His thighs shook every time he lifted himself up; there was a wet slapping sound as his ass met Benny's groin every time he let himself fall back down. 

"Fuck..." Benny groaned, face pressed against Dean's chest and fingers digging into his back. "Dean, baby, I can't hold out."

Dean rode him even faster. "It's okay. It's okay. I want you to."

All he needed was permission. Benny let go with a shout, and Dean kept fucking him right through his orgasm, never slowing until Benny slumped backwards, spent. 

Dean could barely feel his legs as he lifted himself off of Benny's lap and stood. He stumbled a few steps, then collapsed backwards onto the bed with a weak, giddy chuckle. His cock flopped limply against his thigh. Benny's girth was so overwhelming that he could never seem to get hard at the same time as getting fucked. But after only a minute or two to recover, a pleasurable little twinge seemed to signal his readiness. He reached down and began to lazily stroke himself. 

He responded quickly. But just as he was getting hard, Benny leaped out of his chair and swatted Dean's hand away. "Let me do that," he said. A few more pumps of his hand and Dean was standing at attention. Benny produced another condom and slid it on. 

"No arguments here," Dean sighed, leaning back and enjoying the warm, wet, pressure of Benny's mouth through the thin barrier of the condom. 

Dean's hands relaxed at his sides. Benny reached up and found them, lacing their fingers together and holding on as if they were the only things keeping each other from falling. 

Dean arched and bucked, and finally shuddered and whimpered as he came, too well-fucked to last for more than a minute. His hands clenched on Benny's. Benny matched him for strength as he sucked the last few moans out of Dean. 

Both too tired to move, Dean fell asleep on his back in the damp of his own sweat and come. Benny curled up with his head resting on Dean's inner thigh, his face nuzzled up against Dean's balls. 

They slept like stones. 

\-----

The sky outside the porthole had long since gone dark, and Castiel was still swishing impatiently in his basin of lukewarm water, alone. The floor was criss-crossed with shiny, drying trails from where he had dragged himself around the room, inspecting everything that might have been of interest. He'd picked through most of Dean's books. When he ran out of ones with pictures, he resorted to studying the assemblages of printed letters on the pages as if he could draw some meaning from them by the sheer power of his boredom. 

Dean hadn't made any particular promises about when he'd be back, but Castiel had become accustomed to seeing him in the evening. Now, as the moon climbed in the sky, Castiel grew more and more nervous. Something could have happened to Dean. The ship could be in danger. The world could be ending for all he knew, confined to this little cabin far from home. As long as he was here, he was more or less helpless. 

It was pathetic how quickly he perked up when he heard something jiggling in the lock and the door slowly sliding open. "Dean?" he called out softly. 

The figure in the shadow of the doorway flinched at the sound of Castiel's voice. By the time Castiel realized that the man in the doorway was not Dean, he had already entered, closed the door behind him, and removed his pistol from its holster. "My God," he said. "He really was hiding something."

It was the same voice that Castiel had heard argue with Dean outside the cabin door – Creedy. 

"Who the hell are you?" Creedy whispered. He held his gun by his side. His wide eyes searched Castiel again and again. 

Castiel sat as still as a statue, his elbows propped on the edge of the basin, his lower body hidden beneath the dark, glassy surface of the water. He was silent. There was nothing he could say to make this situation any better. 

"What..." Creedy seemed paralyzed by his own confusion. Whatever he'd been expecting to find in here, Castiel wasn't it. "What are you..." He inched closer and closer to the basin, his fingers tight around the grip of the pistol. By watching Creedy's eyes, Castiel saw the exact moment when he drew close enough for the water's surface to change from dark and reflective to moonlit and transparent. He glimpsed the tangle of tentacles in the bottom of the basin. It took another second for him to realize that those tentacles were attached to Castiel. 

That's when he finally raised his gun.

He leapt back as he did it, flailing, panicked, trying to put some distance between himself and the monster he had discovered. But the cabin was small, and Castiel's tentacles were long. He snapped the pistol out of Creedy's hand before it could even finish rising to find its target. 

"Listen to me, please..." Castiel said, his tentacle holding Creedy's wrist tight, but it was far too late for words. Creedy pulled a dagger out of his belt with his free hand and slashed at Castiel. He swung the blade in every direction, trying to hit something, anything. He was wild. There would be no reasoning with him. 

Castiel fought down a twinge of sympathy as he easily dodged the dagger and lashed a tentacle around Creedy's other wrist. The man had no idea how outmatched he was. The gun had been his one advantage, and he'd wasted it by getting too close. Now he was hand-to-hand with Castiel, one-on-one, and near water. And even though the water was nothing more than a wooden basin, it was still Castiel's element. 

Creedy, finding his hands bound, tried to kick out as Castiel reeled him in. But he was weak compared to Castiel's vicelike grip, and he had so very few limbs. Soon they were all used up, tangled in Castiel's tentacles, and Castiel still had limbs left over to drag Creedy over the edge of the basin and hold his head under the surface until the thrashing stopped. 

There was an awful stillness when it was done. Then practicality took over. When Castiel pulled the body out of the water, it was no longer a person. It was just an object that Castiel needed to remove from the room as quickly as possible. For the first time since leaving Stanford, Castiel pulled himself across the floor and exited the cabin. 

The crew member on watch was slumped over against the railing, a lump forming on the back of his head. Castiel only looked close enough to confirm that he was still alive and breathing. Then he returned to the cabin, dragged the body out, and tossed it overboard. It sank readily into the dark water. With any luck, they would be long gone from Havana by the time it started to float. 

Castiel returned to the cabin. He was about to climb back into his basin, but stopped just before touching the death-tainted water. 

He almost dumped it out. But then he would have had to refill it, and a bucket popping in and out of a porthole in the quiet, still harbor would have been far too conspicuous. In the end he eased himself back into the water and sat there miserably through the night. 

He didn't sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean picks up his cargo and takes Cas for a swim.

Dean was usually up before the sun, but in the warmth and comfort of Benny's bed he slept until the morning light found its way through the window and into his eyes. He tried to sit up only to find himself pinned. Benny had scooted up Dean's body in his sleep, wrapping his arms around Dean's hips and nuzzling his face into Dean's belly like a pillow. Dean ruffled his hair until he stirred. "Morning," he said, as much a statement as a greeting. 

Benny held Dean tighter, grinding his beard against the pooch of skin just under Dean's belly button until Dean had to laugh from ticklishness. "Stay a little longer, sugar," he begged. 

"Can't," Dean sighed, worming free of Benny's hold and rolling out of bed. "I gotta track down my contact. I've got less than a week to finish this deal and head back up to the Inferno, or Crowley won't be happy."

"When is he ever happy?" Benny muttered. With Dean gone from the bed, he spread out like a cat to occupy the rest of the space. 

Dean hesitated for a moment, staring at Benny's long limbs and loose muscles draped lazily over the mattress. Even his cock looked lazy flopped over against his thigh, firm from whatever dream he'd been having but not enough to make it stand up. His laziness pulled at Dean like a magnet. It would have been so easy to fall back into bed and let the day start without them while they made lazy love. But instead, Dean collected his clothes from the floor and started to put them on. "He's even less happy with me than usual," he said darkly. "Seriously. This job needs to go off without a hitch."

Benny sat up. "Who you looking for again?" 

"Man named, uh..." Dean fished a scrap of paper out of his pocket and read the name off it. "Rufus Turner." 

Benny reached across to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a handful of rolled-up papers. They were maps. He unrolled them one by one until he found the one he was looking for. "Here," he said, holding the map so Dean could see and pointing to a spot on it. "He used to be based in Havana, but the local law enforcement started giving him some trouble. He moved his operation here six months back or so." 

Dean looked. Benny was pointing to a stretch of coastline just a few miles east of the city limits. "You know this guy?"

"I've dealt with him once or twice. Oh! Here..." This time Benny crossed the room to open a wooden chest and fish around in it until he produced a bottle of dark whiskey. "This should help things go smoothly."

Dean reached out, but stopped just shy of taking the whiskey. "You know I can't pay you back for this."

"Shut your mouth. I don't want your money." Benny grabbed Dean's hand and slapped the bottle into it. 

"I owe you, man," said Dean. 

"Gimme a kiss and we're square," Benny replied. 

One kiss turned into two, then three, and then Dean was pushing Benny back into bed and crawling in after him. What were a few more hours, anyway?

\-----

When Dean finally stumbled out of Benny's cabin, bleary, unsteady on his feet, and only mostly dressed, a few of the crew looked up to wave to him unconcernedly. A well-fucked Dean Winchester was not an unusual sight aboard the Blood Chalice. Dean waved back, unembarrassed, and made his way down the docks toward the Impala. 

He expected a certain amount of ribbing when he returned. After all, his crew knew from experience how to interpret the presence of the Blood Chalice in the harbor coupled with their captain's extended absence. But there were no whistles or shouted greetings as he approached. Instead, he could see the scurry of nervous activity on deck. When someone finally noticed him approaching, all they did was heave a relieved sigh and shout to the rest of the crew, "He's back!" 

"What's going on?" Dean demanded as he climbed aboard. Most of the crew were milling around one of their comrades who was sitting against the wall and holding a bloody cloth to the back of his head. Dean recognized him as the sailor who had been on watch late last night. 

When the man heard Dean, he shifted as if to get up. Dean waved him back down. He carefully peeled the cloth off the man's head to see a nasty lump oozing blood. 

"It was Creedy," said the man, replacing the cloth with a grimace. "He came back last night asking to collect his effects. I'm sorry, Captain, but I let him aboard. I didn't think anything of it."

"It's okay," said Dean. He kept his voice even and his shoulders level, projecting calm onto his frazzled crew. But he couldn't stop his eyes from flicking toward his cabin door. "What did he really want?"

"Don't know. I turned my back for a second, and next thing I know I'm waking up with a headache and I've lost half an hour."

Anna, standing off to the side with her arms crossed tight across her chest, took over from there. "We've checked the barracks, the hold, the food stores... Nothing's missing. Not even Creedy's own things." 

By this time the whole crew was circling Dean, looking up at him for an answer. "If nothing's missing, then nothing's missing. No use worrying about it," he said. "Let's get this job done and go home. We've got a rendezvous point. Get ready to cast off." 

The crew sprang into action. All except the injured man, who Dean sent below deck to get some rest. While he gave them one last glance to make sure everything was running smoothly, Anna joined him by his side. 

"You're wearing your shirt inside out," she said quietly. She wore the faintest of smiles. 

Dean looked down. She was right. He pulled his jacket closed to hide it. "Benny told me how to find our contact here in Cuba," he stammered. "It might have taken us days to track him down if I hadn't..."

"There's no need to get defensive," Anna interrupted. "You clearly enjoyed yourself last night. And this morning. I'm glad." 

There was no hint of malice in her voice. Dean swallowed down the rest of his excuses. 

"We didn't search your cabin," said Anna. 

"What?"

"To see if anything was missing after Creedy was here. I didn't let anyone into your cabin. I didn't go in either." She looked up at him, reading him like a page. Dean didn't realize that his eyes had been silently asking her permission until she added, "So, go check."

Dean turned and made for his cabin door as nonchalantly as he could manage. Under the circumstances, that turned out to be a hurried, undignified shuffle. He flung the door open, not sure what he was expecting, not even sure if he wanted to guess. 

Cas looked up from the book whose illustrations he was admiring. "Hello, Dean," he said. The cabin was just as Dean had left it: every piece of furniture in its place, every candle in its holder, and, save for the one in Cas's hands, every book on its shelf. Cas's basin was by the bed, stagnant water splashing quietly against the sides every time Cas shifted his weight. And there was Cas – safe, whole, and unafraid.

" _Fuck_ ," Dean sighed in relief so profound that he was unable to contain his profanity. He planted his back against the door. It shoved closed as he let it take his weight. "You... you're okay?"

Cas stared at him with an unreadable intensity. "I'm fine."

"Nothing... happened? While I was gone?"

Cas looked back down at the book. "Were you gone? I didn't notice."

Dean stayed leaning against the door, his heart pounding in his ears, but Cas didn't look back up. Leisurely, Cas dipped his fingers into the damp of his hair and turned the pages until he found the next illustration. 

"Fucker," Dean muttered as he levered himself back to standing. He turned and left the room, slamming the door behind him. 

When he leaned down to lock the door, he peered closely. Around the edges of the keyhole were the telltale scratches of a lock pick. 

\-----

It was a short trip down the coast to the spot that Benny had pointed out on the map – the spot after the buildings of Havana thinned until there was nothing but sand and trees visible on the shore, where Rufus Turner had chosen to live. Dean pointed to the little dip in the coastline, a cove not unlike their usual berth near Stanford, which folded a section of beach out of sight behind a sand bar. 

"There," he said. 

Anna squinted at the shore. "You sure?" she said. "It doesn't look like there's anything there."

"Dude came out here for privacy," Dean pointed out. "Besides, I've been counting miles and watching the coastline. This is right where Benny sent us. Turner'll be here." 

They coasted into the shallow water, around the sand bar that sheltered the cove. Dean still didn't see anything but trees and shrubs. Still, he dropped anchor and prepared to go ashore. He picked Anna and a couple of other crew members to load into the dinghy with him. He brought the rest of the money that Crowley had given him, because he was optimistic. But he also brought a dagger and his pistols, because he wasn't _that_ optimistic. 

As soon as the dinghy's bottom brushed sand, there was a rustling in the brush at the edge of the trees just up the beach from them. A man stepped out of the trees. His close-cropped hair and severe mustache were glossy black, but the lines on his face and the dusting of gray in his stripe of a goatee belied his age. His brown skin was shiny under the harsh light of the sun. His hand rested on the pistol in his belt with a comfort and familiarity that only comes with decades of use. Dean almost palmed his own pistol, but then he thought better of it. If it came to violence, he did not like his chances of besting this man at a quick-draw. 

Instead, Dean raised his hands and smiled. "Rufus Turner, I'm hoping?" he called out. 

Rufus stopped and planted his feet in the sand several strides away from where Dean and his landing party sat in their dinghy. He shouted to them, "That's right. You Crowley's boy?"

"I'm no one's boy," Dean replied. 

"Don't get smart with me. Tell me who you goddamn are!" 

Anna prodded Dean with her elbow. Dean replied to Rufus, "I'm Dean Winchester. And yeah, Crowley sent me."

Rufus's shoulders dropped and his eyebrows flew up into the wrinkles of his forehead. He gripped his pistol more tightly. "Did you just say _Winchester? _" he said. Then, without waiting for an answer, "Get the hell off my beach." And he turned back toward the trees.__

__"Whoa, wait..." Dean hopped out of the dinghy and started to run after him, only to be stopped when Rufus whipped around and pointed his pistol square at Dean's face. There was a rustling of guns from behind Dean as Anna and the others readied their defense. Dean held up his hand, ordering them to stay calm._ _

__"You're not Crowley's boy," said Rufus. "You're Bobby Singer's. What, did he send you to spy on me?"_ _

__Dean hooked his pistol out of his belt with one finger and tossed it aside. He put his hands up. "If you and Bobby have history, that's nothing to do with me. I'm here for the job. That's it." Very slowly, he reached back into the dinghy and felt around until his fingers touched smooth glass. He held up the bottle of whiskey that Benny had given him so that Rufus could see it. "So maybe you could point that pistol somewhere else?" he added._ _

__The pistol stayed pointed at Dean for a few more excruciating seconds. Then Rufus peered at the bottle in Dean's hands. He holstered the pistol, edged forward, and snatched the bottle away to peer at it more closely. "Winchester," he said under his breath, somewhere between a curse and a sigh. "Alright. Fine. Where's my money?"_ _

__"Where's my cargo?" was Dean's immediate reply._ _

__Rufus's lips twitched into the tiniest of smiles. "Back there in the trees. Give me the money up front, and you can load the cargo onto your ship when it gets dark. Don't want anyone spotting us."_ _

__Dean gestured to the sandbar that hid them from view. "No one's gonna spot us. We can load it now."_ _

__"Boy, if you don't want my gun in your face again you'll do as I say in my own house. I've bought my privacy dearly and I don't intend to throw it away because you couldn't wait a few hours," said Rufus, but his voice was more bluster than threat now._ _

__"Well, you're not seeing my money until I see the cargo," Dean replied._ _

__Rufus shrugged. "Fair enough," he said, and he began leading Dean and his crew back into the trees._ _

__The brush was thick where the sand gave way to grainy earth, and the trees stood close together. As the beach was invisible from the sea, Rufus's base of operations was invisible from the beach. Rufus picked his way through it gracefully and silently. Dean and his people trampled their way through after him. Soon, the beach and the ship were nothing more than shafts of light making their way between the tree trunks behind them._ _

__Dean didn't see the cabin until they were almost on top of it. Its shape and texture made it melt into the foliage. But once he'd recognized the outline of the door and the slope of the roof, he began noticing other things about the area that hinted that it was lived-in. The brush was sparser here from being trampled every day. There was a depression in the earth with some ashes in it – an outdoor cooking pit. And, when Dean looked closely, he found that what he had thought were mounds of oddly-shaped foliage behind the cabin were really stack of crates artfully covered with broad, thick leaves from the surrounding trees._ _

__Dean took a slow walk around the stack of crates, sizing them up. Then he returned to where Rufus was standing and watching. He took the money out of his pocket – the bulk of the money that Crowley had given him, and the very last of the money that he had – and held it up so Rufus could see._ _

__"You're not gonna look in the crates to make sure I'm not ripping you off?" said Rufus, twisting his mouth into an incredulous smile. He eyed the cash, but didn't move to take it._ _

__"Well, you wouldn't be ripping me off," said Dean. "You'd be ripping Crowley off. And I think you're smarter than that."_ _

__Rufus raised an eyebrow at him. "You don't even know what it is you're supposed to be transporting, do you?"_ _

__"As a rule, no."_ _

__"Maybe you're not Bobby's boy after all," Rufus sighed. "You're your daddy's boy. I'll say what I will about Bobby Singer but at least he's not stupid like you Winchesters."_ _

__Dean's eyes flicked up toward the trees. He'd been called stupid enough times in his life that the insult no longer interested him. What did interest him was the thick, green canopy and brush cover surrounding Rufus's house and yard, and the crescent-shaped objects hanging off the branches and littering the ground. Plantains. Not as sweet as bananas, but just as filling._ _

__As if he hadn't even heard the insult, Dean said, "My crew's gonna come ashore and eat their fill of your fruit here."_ _

__Rufus snorted out a laugh. "How do you figure that?"_ _

__"I figure your business is contraband, not plantains," said Dean. "I figure you've got more here than you can eat yourself – you can see they're rotting on the ground. And I figure if you're going to make us wait here until nightfall anyway, then you can show my people a little hospitality."_ _

__"And if I say no?"_ _

__Dean still had the money in his hand. He moved it back toward his pocket, out of sight. "Then you'll see your money again when I see my cargo loaded."_ _

__Without missing a beat, Rufus snatched the money from Dean's hand before it could disappear completely into his pocket. "Let's not be hasty, now," he sighed. He narrowed his eyes at Dean while he thumbed through the money, making sure it was all there. "They can have what they can eat. You don't carry anything off my beach but what you paid for."_ _

__"Fair enough," said Dean, offering Rufus his hand._ _

__Rufus took it, shaking his head with a faint smile. "You're a strange one, Winchester."_ _

__"Not so strange," said Dean. After all, there was no great mystery to him; he took care of his people. His crew hadn't eaten fresh food in weeks. They'd enjoy the chance to relax in the shade and eat fruit right off the trees. He had no deeper motive than that._ _

__Well, maybe one._ _

__\-----_ _

__Once his crew was safely ashore, deep in the trees, Anna watching over them, Dean sneaked back to the beach. The ship was anchored in the little bay, deserted. Dean rowed out as quietly as he could, skipped across the empty deck, and tossed open the door to his cabin._ _

__"Hey, hey! Cas!" he whispered, even though anyone who might overhear was much too far away to worry about._ _

__Cas had been draped pathetically over the side of his basin, looking wilted with boredom. But Dean's excitement was infectious. He looked up, wide-eyed. "What is it?" he replied, whispering to match Dean._ _

__Dean couldn't keep his grin in check. "You wanna go swimming?"_ _

__"I..." There was a pause as Cas cocked his head to peer at Dean out of the corner of his eye. "In the _ocean?_ "_ _

__Dean waved his hands reassuringly. "The whole crew is far enough inland that they can't see the beach. We've got the whole place to ourselves," he said. When Cas failed to look any more enthusiastic, he added, "Come on, I thought you were sick of being cooped up in here!"_ _

__"And what if your crew returns to the shore?" said Cas. "I may not be thrilled about my current accommodations, but I'm no more tempted by the prospect of being discovered and murdered."_ _

__"They're not going anywhere as long as they can keep stuffing their faces. Besides, I told my first mate to keep an eye on them. She'd hog-tie them all before she let them wander off."_ _

__Cas slouched almost imperceptibly back into the safety of his basin._ _

__With a frustrated grunt, Dean stepped forward and offered Cas his hand. "You're not gonna get another chance to stretch your legs until we get back to Stanford. Are you coming swimming with me or not?"_ _

__There was only a second more of hesitation before Cas straightened up and placed his hand in Dean's. He even trusted some of his weight to Dean's hand as he clambered awkwardly out of his basin._ _

__They both squinted as they stepped into the afternoon sun. Cas brought a hand up to shield his eyes, and Dean felt a pang as he remembered that for weeks Cas had only seen the sky through the porthole in the cabin wall. He watched as Cas paused in the center of the deck, scanning the beach for any sign of danger like a bird about to take flight. But he couldn't fly away, of course, he could only shuffle forward painfully slowly, his moist tentacles lifting and sliding over rough wood. Dean stepped forward alongside him, the two of them still hand-in-hand._ _

__They reached the railing. The water lapped gently at the hull of the ship just below them. Cas, with just one more nervous glance at the deserted trees, threw caution to the wind and tipped himself over the edge, splashing down into the crystalline water like a bag of bricks. But as soon as he broke the surface, he transformed. On the deck, he had shambled and plodded. In the water, he flew. With one flap of his tentacles, he sank beneath the ripples until he was no more than a dark patch amongst the smears of color at the bottom of the bay._ _

__Dean watched that dark patch. He tried to track it as it flitted this way and that, but eventually its movement blended with the movement of the waves and Dean lost track of it. For a minute or two he stood, leaning over the railing, his fingertips biting into the wood, his eyes trained on the water._ _

__Then, suddenly, the surface broke with a little _splish_ and Cas's face appeared just below him. "Are you coming in?" he said, and sank back beneath the waves. _ _

__Dean kicked off his shoes. He unbuckled his belt and placed it atop his shoes. His shirt, jacket, and trousers joined the pile. And, because they had been sharing a cabin for weeks and there was no reason that either of them should be bashful at this point, (and besides, Cas was naked too), he stripped out of his undergarments before hopping up on the railing and diving into the warm, salty bay._ _

__He plunged beneath the water in a cloud of bubbles. When he arced back toward the surface, breaking through with a gasp of fresh air, he faltered and sputtered to find Cas face-to-face with him, watching. Cas's tentacles fanned out around him, undulating so slowly that his swimming seemed effortless. Dean's penis flapped against his leg as he treaded water. He glanced up at the deck, where he had left his underwear, but it was too late to go back up and retrieve it now._ _

__Luckily, Cas didn't seem to notice how very naked they both were, or even that one of his tentacles was brushing Dean's ankle with every undulation. He was radiant. He was not beaming, or even smiling, but his face shined with an intensity that Dean had not seen in him since the time he woke up in the cave in the cove at Stanford. It was as if there were something fundamental and beautiful about Cas that got turned off when he didn't have an ocean in which to spread his legs._ _

__"Follow me," said Cas. His tentacles folded up, and he began to sink._ _

__Dean took a deep breath and kicked his way down after him. The water buoyed him up even more than it did back up north, where the water was colder and thinner. He had to fight with all four limbs to stay under. But he managed to keep up with Cas's descent, and soon they reached the bottom of the cove. It was not sandy, as Dean had expected. In fact, the blotches of color that Dean had seen from the surface only intensified as he got closer. Down here, they were a forest of vibrant hues and impossible shapes._ _

__But Dean only got a quick, blurry glance at the underwater landscape before his chest started to tighten and air started to escape his lungs in little puffs of bubbles. He kicked his way back to the surface, his ears popping as he floated back up as quickly as a cork._ _

__Cas joined him there a moment later. "What's the matter?" he said._ _

__Dean took a few deep breaths before he could answer, "It's too much work to stay down."_ _

__"Oh," said Cas, waving Dean's protest away. "It's simple. Just let all the air out of your lungs, and you'll sink with no effort."_ _

__Dean pressed his lips together, giving Cas time to figure it out on his own. When he just kept staring at Dean innocently, Dean told him, "Now, I want you to think about what you just said..."_ _

__"Ah... oh. Right," said Cas. He considered for a moment, then suggested, "I could hold you down."_ _

__"Aaaand once again with the thinking..." Dean muttered, his eyes flying wide._ _

__"I'm quite serious. I'll anchor you to the bottom. Since you won't be expending your air supply by swimming, you'll be able to stay down longer. And when you want to go back up, you can simply tap me on the shoulder and I'll release you."_ _

__"I think I'll just swim around on the surface, thanks," said Dean, chuckling nervously._ _

__"I want you to see what's under the water."_ _

__"Why?"_ _

__"Because it's beautiful."_ _

__They treaded water together, and for once Dean found it easy to hold Cas's intense, unblinking gaze. It wasn't a matter of fear. It wasn't as if Cas was going to let Dean drown when he was his only way home. In fact, logically, Dean might even be safer at the bottom of the bay with Cas than he would be on the surface alone. But it was a matter of principle. Cas wasn't just asking Dean to go swimming with him; he was asking Dean to trust him. Much as Dean had asked Cas to trust him when he'd promised that his crew wouldn't interrupt them._ _

__And if they were going to decide to trust each other, Dean had some questions he needed answered first._ _

__"Was Creedy in our cabin last night?"_ _

__Cas's face was like a stone. But eventually he opened his mouth and slowly, simply, said, "Yes."_ _

__"Is he dead?"_ _

__"Yes."_ _

__The thin strip of water separating them seemed as wide as an ocean. "Is anyone gonna find his body?" said Dean, running an exhausted hand down his face to flick the water out of his eyes._ _

__"Within the next few days, most likely." Nothing in Cas's face or tone offered an explanation or asked for forgiveness. He stated the facts like a machine, daring Dean to judge him for them._ _

__But Dean wasn't looking to judge. "Was he gonna kill you?"_ _

__Cas blinked and cocked his head ever so slightly. "Yes," he said._ _

__"Okay," said Dean. The distance between them didn't seem so vast anymore. The flapping of Cas's tentacles kicked up eddies that swirled the hairs on Dean's legs. It was up to either one of them to bridge that narrow gap. "Okay. Let's go."_ _

__This time, when Cas slipped beneath the surface, Dean felt a tentacle gently snake its way around his ankle. A deep breath, and then he was being pulled under. There was only a brief moment of panic as he saw how fast the surface was falling away above him. Then he relaxed into the easy drift downwards._ _

__They reached the bottom in seconds, before Dean even had time to wonder how long this breath of air would last. And Cas had been right. Now that he had enough time to stay and peer through eyelids squinted against the stinging salt, he could see that it was beautiful down here. The plain sand of the beach did not even hint at the vibrancy hidden beneath the water. Blooming out of the sand, so thick that they were almost on top of one another, were corals and all the things that lived in them. They stood tall and flat, round and branching, twisting around each other and nestled inside one another. Yellows and greens and pinks and purples, all with a tinge of the sapphire blue of the sun filtered through deep water. Fishes and eels and crawling things made the rocks dance with life. Dean had expected the bottom of the ocean to be a soggy desert, but it was a rainforest._ _

__He turned left, looking for the same sense of wonder on Cas's face that was on his own. And he forgot all about the reef around him. Dean had thought that he knew Cas after weeks of sharing a room with him, seeing him curled up in his basin every day, but he had never seen him like this. Dean was briefly visiting the world beneath the surface of the sea; Cas was one of its denizens. His tentacles embraced the coral beneath him. Where they touched a yellow, prickly patch of coral his skin brightened and tented up to match it for color and texture. One tentacle fell onto the sandy bottom; it turned white and the skin became grainy. His lower half melted into the reef like he was a part of it. But even his upper half did not look human down here. His eyes stared into the saturated blue distance as if he could see through the water as easily as Dean saw through air on a clear day. His skin was almost green, and Dean could not tell if it was the water stealing the red tones from his flesh or if his dark octopus blood was now pumping through all of his veins. His hair hung suspended like tendrils of black water flowing in the gentle current of the bay._ _

__Even here, in a seascape warmer and brighter and farther south than Cas's people had ever traveled, he was more himself here than Dean had known was possible. And only then did Dean understand how much he had been asking of Cas to make him live for weeks in a basin barely big enough to hold him. If Cas was whole in that moment, then up until then Dean had only known a fraction of him. But he found, with a twisting of his heart, that he wanted to know the rest._ _

__Dean didn't notice that he was out of air until his chest started sucking against the pressure of his closed-off throat. He quickly tapped Cas on the shoulder. Cas released him with a gentle push upwards, and he bobbed to the surface with a cloud of bubbles and a gasp of fresh air._ _

__Cas followed him up. This time, when their eyes met, Cas was faintly but undeniably smiling. "Again?" he said._ _

__"Yeah!" said Dean._ _

__Down and up they went, again and again. And every time Dean would forget that he needed to breathe, that he couldn't just stay down there forever, enjoying the warm pressure and weightlessness and dazzling color, anchored by the pull of Cas's tentacle around his leg. And even when his body reminded him that he did not belong here, when his lungs began to burn and his chest began to heave, each time he would try to ignore it for a little longer. To hold his breath for a little longer. To steal glances at Cas's hair waving with the push and pull of the waves, just a little longer. So each time, his swim to the surface was a little more frantic and his gasps of air a little more desperate._ _

__He'd lost count of how many times they'd dove and risen together when he looked over at Cas, bobbing on the surface beside him, waiting for him to catch his breath, and realized that Cas was breathing as hard as he was._ _

__"You okay?" he said._ _

__Cas was gulping air and working to stay afloat, his mouth dipping below the waterline so that he sputtered with each breath. "I'm fine," he replied. "Do you want to go down again?"_ _

__"I'm, uh... feeling kinda lightheaded," said Dean. "You go down by yourself for a while. Let me catch my breath some more."_ _

__Somewhat reluctantly, Cas let the air out of his lungs and let himself drift down onto the reef alone. He should have been able to stay there for as long as he wanted, easily, but he'd barely touched coral before he turned and scrambled back toward the surface. He broke through into the air with a gasp._ _

__"Okay, what's wrong?" said Dean._ _

__Cas finally admitted, "I can't breathe. The water is too warm here. It's salty and... thin. I pump it over my gills as fast as I can but I still run out of oxygen."_ _

__"Like how the air gets thin at the top of a mountain?"_ _

__Even scared and breathless, Cas managed to peer quizzically at Dean. "What's a mountain?"_ _

__"Never mind," said Dean. "You can breathe okay up here though, right?"_ _

__"Yes, the air is the same here as it is at home, and my lungs work fine, but..." Cas gazed longingly back into the depths, down where he could move so gracefully and his tentacles could spread out to their full length, where his skin glowed green and his hair waved freely._ _

__"Yeah, I know," said Dean. "Sorry. But for now let's get you back on the ship, okay?"_ _

__They climbed back onto the deck, Dean got dressed, and they slunk back to the cabin. Somehow, Cas's slow, clumsy progress across the wooden deck was even more painful to watch after seeing him in his true element. They returned to the cabin and Cas slumped in a heap at the foot of Dean's bed while Dean dumped out and refilled his basin. The water he pulled up was cleaner, but just as warm and airless as the water that was now seeping into his floorboards. Cas wouldn't be able to breathe underwater again until they returned north._ _

__When it was full, Cas climbed back into his basin and rested his head against the edge, trying to find a restful position while keeping his head above water._ _

__Dean crouched down and shoved the basin, heavy with water and with its occupant, until it slid across the floor to butt up against the foot of the bed. Then he rolled up one of his extra shirts like a pillow and placed it on the bed next to the basin. "That oughta be more comfortable," he muttered as he left._ _

__Cas responded only with a dejected wave of one tentacle, and a sigh._ _

__\-----_ _

__As soon as the sun touched the horizon and began to disappear behind it, Dean's crew began the task of uncovering the crates behind Rufus's house and carrying them onto the ship. It was completely dark before they were so much as a fraction of the way finished. Dean had to wonder if Rufus had insisted on waiting for sundown just so he would have the pleasure of watching the sailors trip and curse their way through the brush and down the beach._ _

__Dean stood on the sand and supervised the loading of the crates into the dinghy that would carry them to the ship. It was brighter there than in the trees, now that the moon had risen. Rufus, who had been ignoring the proceedings so far, came up beside Dean and watched the steady stream of crates make their way from the beach to the ship. His brown skin was almost blue in the cool moonlight, and his eyes were as black as a secret._ _

__"I don't know what Crowley's game is," he said suddenly. "He's always been a predictable kind of guy – he imports what he knows he can sell. Not a big risk-taker, that one, not if the circumstances stay constant. Not one to, say, out of the blue decide to smuggle in a bunch of fancy, custom-made..."_ _

__"I told you already," Dean interrupted, "I don't want to know what I'm transporting."_ _

__Rufus looked down his nose at him with something like pity. "Maybe you _should_ wanna know."_ _

__"How's that gonna help anything?"_ _

__"Knowledge is power."_ _

__Dean scuffed the sand with the toe of his boot. "I'm not interested in power," he said. "I'm interested in keeping my crew fed. I'm interested in keeping Crowley satisfied enough that he doesn't go looking for people to make examples of. I'm interested in finishing the job and shaving a piece off of my debt. And I know who Crowley is and what kind of things he does, but sometimes not knowing the details is the only thing that keeps me from forgetting everything that I'm interested in and dumping all those crates into the Caribbean."_ _

__They stood in silence for a while as the last of the crates were loaded and the dinghy was pushed off the sand and into the bay._ _

__"I was wrong about you," Rufus finally said. "You're not much like your daddy at all. You're your momma's boy."_ _

__Dean's boot flinched mid-scuff, sending a spray of sand into the air and making him wobble on his feet. "You knew my mom?" he demanded._ _

__Rufus laughed. "No, no. I never met Mary Campbell. I was just a cabin boy back then, and she was pirate royalty. I never even served in the Campbell fleet, so I only knew her by reputation."_ _

__"And what was her reputation?"_ _

__"Coldblooded," said Rufus matter-of-factly. "Ruthless. Dedicated to the fleet and the life. Of course, her daddy would have made sure that that was the image of her that people saw. He was going to give her her first command soon. Couldn't let her new crew know... couldn't let her rivals know... just how gentle she really was."_ _

__"But you knew?" said Dean incredulously._ _

__"I observed. Big scandal when she turned her back on piracy to go marry a lubber. Everyone said she must have been crazy, or scheming, or maybe Winchester had one over on her. But it doesn't take a genius to see that for her to give up her birthright the way she did, and stay with a man for ten years and bring up kids, would take a powerful kind of love."_ _

__The last of the boxes was transferred from the dinghy to the ship, and the dinghy was on its way back to shore to pick up the rest of the crew. Dean couldn't wait to be on it. As hungry as he always was for stories about his mother, he didn't like her name in Rufus's mouth. He didn't like it in anyone's mouth but his own, and Sam's, and dad's. But John Winchester was dead now, and Sam knew even less of her than Dean did. She was a ghost who lived only in vague secondhand memories now._ _

__"You didn't know her," Dean snapped. "And you don't know me."_ _

__Rufus chuckled. "I know you're about as bloodthirsty and ruthless as she was. Have a nice trip up north, kid."_ _

__\-----_ _

__Dean made sure the cargo was strapped in tight. He made sure that the rigging was all in place and the watch was set for the night. He made sure the wind was with them and the way ahead was clear. Then he went back to his cabin to check on his guest._ _

__Cas was resting with his head on Dean's rolled-up shirt, his upper body draped over the edge of the bed. With his bare back lit by the moonlight through the porthole and his lower half disappearing into the deep shadow of the basin, Dean might have mistaken him for human if he hadn't known._ _

__"Hello, Dean," said Cas, giving up the pretext of being asleep._ _

__"Okay there, buddy?" said Dean. He sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off his boots._ _

__Cas barely lifted his head from the soggy patch it had made on the sheets. His hair never seemed to get completely dry no matter how long he spent above water. "I want to go home," he said._ _

__Without knowing why, Dean reached out and smoothed Cas's damp hair back off his forehead. "Setting a course," he said. "We'll be there before you know it."_ _

__Dean curled up on his bed to leave room for Cas. His lower legs ended up tucked to one side, right in front of Cas's face. Before long, Dean felt a hand brush his ankle and five fingers close gently around it. Only then did Cas breathe a great sigh and finally fall asleep._ _


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Cas talk family, and Dean performs some thrilling heroics.

They left Cuba behind them and sailed north, weaving their way through the Bahamas and cutting a wide berth around Florida. The cargo weighed heavy in their hold, and heavier on Dean's mind. Running into a Navy vessel, or even some unfriendly fellow pirates and smugglers, would be annoying with their storage compartments empty. With them full of valuable contraband, it would be deadly. 

Cas gazed out of the porthole window at the endless expanse of sea. His tentacles waved idly in the water of his basin. His elbows were propped on Dean's mattress. One hand was resting on Dean's ankle, his thumb rubbing back and forth over Dean's heel. 

At first Cas had only hung onto Dean's ankle at night to keep himself from slipping back into the basin in his sleep. But lately Dean had noticed it happening even when they were both awake – like now, Cas curled up at the foot of the bed while Dean reclined and read him the next chapter of Frankenstein. It seemed that that hand had become accustomed to keeping contact with Dean, even when there was no real reason for it to do so. 

"That's the end of the chapter," Dean declared, closing the book. 

"Read me one more page," said Cas. 

Dean sighed. "I need to get back on deck. I've been in here too long already. They'll be wondering where I am." But he made no motion to stand up. He just turned his ankle back and forth within Cas's gentle grip. The question came from nowhere, and was out of Dean's mouth before he'd even finished forming it into a thought: "Is your family wondering where you are?" 

Cas drew his hand back, slid his elbows off the edge of the bed, and reclined into his basin. From there, his head and shoulders leaning out of the water, he stared at Dean with narrowed eyes. Finally, he said, "I don't have what you would call a family. Merfolk grow up very quickly and live for a very long time. Our biological parents and siblings don't play much of a role in our lives. Instead, we organize into garrisons, each with its own territory. Very few of the merfolk in my garrison are related by blood, but we are strongly connected by our sense of community and duty. We call each other 'brother' and 'sister' to reflect that. Each of us has his or her own responsibilities, and we often roam far. Sometimes we do not see each other for many days or even weeks. But for how long I've been gone, yes, my garrison knows by now that something has happened to me. And they are wondering where I am."

"Oh," said Dean, looking down at the book in his hands. "That's, uh... that was a bit more of an answer than I was expecting." He thumbed idly at the page edges until another question came to him just as suddenly as the first. "Why 'garrison?'"

"What?"

"The group you're with," Dean went on. "Why do you call yourselves a garrison? Instead of a school or a pod or a... I dunno. It's kind of militaristic."

Cas nodded. "It fits. We are highly regimented. Hierarchical. Organized. Like I said, it's not what you would call a family." 

"And you're happy like that?" 

"It's not a matter of being happy," said Cas. "I do what is required of me. When each individual serves their calling, then the group as a whole is as efficient and secure as possible. Our work gets done."

"What work?"

"You have a lot of questions today." 

Dean shrugged and tossed the book lightly toward the end of the bed. It slid off the edge and landed, pages splayed open, on the floor. "I want to get to know you," he said. "Part of that is knowing where you're from."

Cas inclined his head ever so slightly. "And where are you from?" he asked. 

"I'm a pirate," Dean laughed. "I'm from everywhere." 

If Cas found that funny, it didn't show on his face. "Don't be coy, Dean," he said as he levered himself up to standing and let the water run off his body. "I've been very forthcoming with you. More so than is strictly allowed by my kind when dealing with humans." Shaking each tentacle as it exited the water, he crawled out of his basin and onto the wooden floor. He slouched his way slowly across the room, picked up the book from where it had landed, smoothed its pages, and placed it back on the shelf. 

Dean waited until Cas had crossed the room and returned to his basin before speaking again, quietly, "I guess I'm the same. Not much of a family that I can remember. I've got my brother, but I barely see him anymore. He's got his own life. And I had my father, but ever since... uh. He was my captain before he was my dad. It's like you said. I did what was required. The work got done. That's all that mattered to him."

Cas nodded. There was something in that nod that acknowledged the specialness of this – that Dean didn't talk like this to just anyone. That they were both in uncharted territory, and trading secrets. But it didn't stop him from prying just a little further. "Ever since what?" he said. 

That startled a laugh out of Dean's throat. "Fuck, you really want to hear me spill my guts, huh?" he said. "Fine. Ever since my mom died."

A simple answer for a simple question. But Cas's even, undemanding gaze coaxed more and more out of Dean. Each sentence fell out of his mouth before he'd even stopped wondering why he'd gone and said the last one out loud. 

"I was four. Someone came into our house when we were all sleeping. He burned her to death. I don't remember much. Just my dad putting Sam in my arms and telling me to run. And I remember the fire. I was four. And I had a family... and then I didn't."

There was no pity on Cas's face. No horror. Not even much in the way of curiosity. Just quiet acceptance of what Dean was telling him. "So your father became a pirate," he said. 

"Not right away," said Dean. "At first it was just about getting to the guy who killed her. Azazel. Took us years to even learn the name. And Azazel was a pirate, so to get at him my dad needed to put together a crew and go sailing. And then once he got out there he needed to pay his crew, so he started taking jobs. Pretty soon we were pirates. And I think it was always supposed to be temporary. In his mind, we'd get Azazel and then we'd go back home. But by the time we got him, Sam and I had grown up on that boat and there was nothing to go back to."

"So the ship is your home," said Cas. "Your crew is your family."

"Yeah," Dean muttered to the ceiling. 

"But you wish it were otherwise."

Dean rolled over on his bed, flopping onto his stomach so his head hung low near the basin where Cas was sitting. "When my dad finally caught up with Azazel, they killed each other. Two ships broadside, cannons tearing up the decks – you could barely see through the smoke and shrapnel. And somehow these two stand on the prows, aim their pistols, and shoot out each other's hearts. Unbelievable. But then, it's happened before. My mom's family – the Campbells – they were pirate royalty. They ran the Atlantic for generations, and they only ones who ever really challenged them was Azazel's fleet. Turns out, killing my mom set off a war. These two fleets, either one of them strong enough to hold the whole damn ocean, tore each other apart in a matter of months. All the Campbells dead; all of Azazel's ships on the bottom of sea. If you pay too much attention, every war starts to look like mutually assured destruction." 

Dean draped his arm lazily downwards to swirl his fingers in the water of Cas's basin. "I love my ship," he said. "I love my crew. But I know what's waiting for me at the end of this path. So maybe me and Crowley will get each other one day. Or the pirates and the Navy. Or hell, maybe it'll be all the sailors against your people. Each side just killing each other until there's no one left. Round and round it goes."

A single tentacle rose up through the water and twined into Dean's fingers where they met the surface. "If you could get out," said Cas, "what would you do instead?"

Dean drew his hand back and shook the water off it with a snap of his wrist. "Doesn't matter," he replied as he slipped into his boots and made for the door. "I can't get out. My family's counting on me."

\-----

Dean sleepwalked through his tasks on deck. For days, his focus had been shifting away from his duties and toward the contents of the basin on the floor of his cabin, and no matter how hard he tried to ground himself in his work his mind kept wandering back there. He was telling Cas things he'd never told a living soul, things he hadn't even realized that he'd been wanting to say. He was pouring his story into Cas and now when he was away from him he felt the absence of it, as if he'd left a piece of himself behind in the water. It pulled at him constantly. A persistent distraction curling itself around his ankle like a warm, wet weight. 

As he felt someone approach, he focused his eyes and tried to pretend he hadn't just spent the last five minutes staring at the wood grain between his feet while his mind wandered off to be with Cas. A flash of red hair and a firm hand on his elbow. He didn't have to turn his head to know that it was Anna. 

"What's going on with you?" she said, quietly enough that the crew working around them wouldn't overhear. 

"Sorry," Dean muttered. 

Anna let a long, slow breath out through her nose and planted her feet. "I don't want you to be sorry," she said. "I want to know what's wrong. You've been late starting your shifts for the last three days, and when you finally get here you don't even pay attention. You've barely spoken to me in a week. You haven't wanted to make love to me since we left Stanford. Which is fine, of course. But then you spend the night with Benny, so is it me? Are you mad at me?" 

"Why would I be mad at you?" Dean laughed, trying to cover up the sinking of his gut. He would have preferred stabbing himself in the leg to making Anna feel like this. But he couldn't offer her an explanation. Not without betraying Cas's trust. "Look, I'm sorry I took off with Benny that night in Havana. You're right. I should be taking care of you first."

"Dean, I don't care that you slept with Benny, and I don't need you to take care of me. I need you to stop dodging my questions and tell me the truth." 

"Are you sure you're not just jealous?" He had to stop himself from flinching as he said it – exactly the kind of evasion that Anna had asked him to stop. But he was tired of lying to her face, so the only option he saw left was being a little shit in the hopes that she would get angry and leave. 

But she didn't rise to the bait. "Dean, if either of us were jealous people, this arrangement would never have worked out. Are you going to tell me what's going on or not?"

Dean only had to stand there in awful, guilty silence for a second or two before he was saved by a voice calling out from high up in the rigging, "Captain! Ships off the port bow!" 

"Oh, thank God," Dean muttered. Then he stood up straight and put on his captain-voice to say, "Anna, go take a closer look. The rest of you, all hands on deck. Rosen, take a squad to standby the cannons, just in case."

The crew swarmed into activity. Anna immediately snapped to attention, their argument momentarily forgotten in the face of oncoming danger. She leaped up to stand on the bow, unfolding a telescope as she went. 

"How many?" Dean called up to her. 

"Two. They're at full sail, going fast. I think one's running from the other." She leaned forward, as if the extra six inches would improve her view enough to identify the crafts. "The one doing the chasing is Navy. The one doing the running... I can't be sure. Can we get any closer?" 

"Not without risking being seen ourselves," said Dean. He felt for the Navy vessel's quarry. He'd been in that same position himself more than once, with lucky escapes as the only reason he was still sailing. But he didn't trust his luck lately, and he couldn't risk being boarded. Not with a hold full of contraband and Cas hiding in his cabin. The other ship would just have to fend for itself while Dean cut a wide berth around the carnage. 

He was about to give the order to nose the Impala further out to sea, away from the other vessels, when Anna said, "Wait, Dean. You should take a look."

"Why?" said Dean, taking the telescope from Anna and pressing it to his eye. 

"I think it's Talbot."

"Shit."

Sure enough, the view through the telescope showed Dean the delicate rigging and graceful curves of the Jewel Thief. He was much too far away to make out individual people on the deck, but he knew that if he closed the gap he would see her captain, Bela Talbot, staring down the approaching Navy menace with dagger eyes. 

"Shit," he said again. 

"What are we going to do?" said Anna. 

Under normal circumstances, Dean would have left Bela high and dry and said that she deserved whatever she had coming to her. But circumstances were anything but normal. Bela, like Dean, was in Crowley's employ. And as they were no more than a couple dozen miles from the mouth of the Inferno, she was probably, like Dean, on her way there to drop off a shipment. If Crowley found out that one of his ships had been boarded by the Navy practically on his front doorstep, he would lock down the Inferno. In less than a day he could make the whole operation disappear from sight, and he had enough lookouts and booby traps in place to make the entire inlet impassable. Even if Bela managed to lose her tail in time to sneak into Crowley's port and avoid being boarded, the Navy vessel would keep searching for her. Probably bring reinforcements too. Dean would be locked out. And with his delivery date approaching, he couldn't afford a delay. Crowley was not an understanding sort of guy when it came to excuses. 

He didn't have to explain any of this to Anna. She already knew what his answer would be. " _Shit_ ," said Dean one more time. "We have to go save her ass, or we miss our delivery and the whole job is blown."

Anna nodded, but reminded Dean, "We're light on crew, ammunition, and money. We can't afford to get into a firefight."

"We can't afford for Crowley to take our ship," said Dean. "Which is what will happen if we don't make our delivery on time. It'll be okay. That Navy vessel will back off as soon as he sees he's outnumbered. By the time he comes back with his buddies, we'll be into the Inferno and home free." 

Anna did not look convinced, but she jumped to the wheel anyway and began angling the Impala to port. "More speed!" she called to the men and women in the rigging. "We're going after them!" 

They curved a path to intercept the Jewel Thief and her pursuer. As Anna steered and commanded the crew, Dean stayed on the bow and peered through the telescope. He was familiar with most of the Navy ships and their captains, and whichever one was currently on Bela's tail would determine all their fates. A smart one would back off in the face of uneven odds, as Dean had said. But a young, cocky one might pick a fight anyway. Then they might all be well and truly screwed. If Crowley would not take kindly to a late shipment, he would be furious if two of his contractors limped into port, licking their cannon-wounds. 

"Who is it?" Anna shouted from the wheel. 

As they veered closer and closer, Dean could make out more and more. He swung the small circle of view that his telescope afforded him back and forth, taking in the whole scene. The tall masts and taut sails of the Jewel Thief as she rabbited across the sea. The strong, hard lines of the Navy ship bearing down on her like a hawk. He could even see a hint of movement across the decks of both ships – crew members swarming like ants, readying for battle – though he could not make out their faces. As the details of the ships grew clearer, he counted the masts on the Navy ship, inspected her colors, and scrutinized her shape until he was so close to being sure of her name that his joyful heart almost leaped into his throat. But he didn't let himself answer Anna until he had picked out the dark shape of a man standing on the prow. He was barely more than a suggestion of a shadow at this distance, but the straight-backed silhouette was familiar enough to push Dean over the edge into certainty. 

"Impressive!" Dean called back to Anna. 

"I don't care how impressed you are!" Anna replied tersely. "Which ship is it?"

"No!" said Dean, laughing. "That's the ship! It's the Impressive! It's Victor!" 

Victor Henricksen was a young Navy officer of high esteem and great renown. Five years ago, fresh out on his first command as a newly-promoted captain, he had caught Dean Winchester red-handed at a smuggling drop outside of Wilmington and taken him prisoner. As far as Victor had been concerned, it was the biggest stroke of luck in his career. All he had to do was hand Dean over to his superiors, and he would go down in history as the man who ended the Winchester legacy of piracy in the Atlantic. But his luck hadn't held out. As soon as he'd had Dean trussed up like a goose in the Impressive's brig, a summer storm had slammed the coast and trapped them all in port. 

For the three days that Dean sat in that holding cell, Victor visited him every day. Ostensibly, he was trying to interrogate the location of the Impala out of him. But they were both young men frustrated by their circumstances and with very little else to do, and so their interrogations had quickly devolved into sharing meals and complaining about their respective bosses. 

Dean remembered how all the air had gone out of Victor when he'd learned of Dean's debt to Crowley. Dean Winchester was not the murdering, hell-bent, monster that Victor had been eager to bring to justice. He was just a smuggler, and a petty, broke one at that. And because Victor's sense of justice was more highly developed than his ambition (or for that matter, his inclination for self-preservation), when the storm had abated and Anna had come to him under the white flag to deal for Dean's freedom, he had talked to her. One of Victor's men had gotten lost in the storm and stumbled onto the Impala. Anna had offered him as an exchange. In the end, Victor had given up the greatest arrest of his career in return for a cabin boy. His superiors had not been pleased. He had lost command of the Impressive. 

Anyone else's career would have been over. Victor was not anyone else. He'd risen back through the ranks and reclaimed his ship three years later. 

Since then, Dean and Victor had crossed paths a half-dozen times. Victor understood that arresting Dean would be a pointless exercise in cutting off one of the many heads of Crowley's empire, so he held out for Dean to one day give up Crowley himself. Dean always laughed him off. As desperate as he was, squealing to the Navy was below where he could bear to stoop. Still, their relationship remained mutually beneficial. Victor would give Dean warning as to where the Navy might next be making a show of force, and Dean would strategically evade those areas. And if there was a particularly nasty fleet pillaging the coast at the time – hitting small towns, murdering under the white flag, raping – then Dean would give up just enough information for Victor to take them by surprise a week or two later. 

Victor always said that he would wait for the day that Dean would tell him where the Inferno was hidden. Dean always cheekily replied that he would wait for the day that Victor would give him a full pardon. Neither had delivered yet. In the meantime, they both always said that the sex was spectacular. 

Only Anna knew of their arrangement. If the secret ever made its way to Crowley or the Navy admirals, it would be the death of one or both of them.

Anna lowered her voice and glanced about to make sure no one was listening too closely while Dean joined her at the wheel. "Are you sure?" she murmured. 

"Sure enough," said Dean. "Come on, get us close enough for me to wave at him."

"Please don't let your crew see you flirting with the Navy captain," Anna groaned. "You'll blow both your covers."

"Come on, it'll look like I'm baiting him. They'll love it. Oh hey, he saw us!" 

There was a visible shift in the buzz of activity on the Impressive's deck as a lookout finally took their eyes off the Jewel Thief long enough to notice the Impala streaking up alongside them out of the blue. It slowed, it turned, and it started up again at an even faster pace. All except its captain. The figure at the bow, now near enough that it was no longer a silhouette, stood stock still and watched Dean's approach with barely even a twitch. 

"He's not slowing down," Anna growled. 

"He'll back off," said Dean. "He won't tangle with me just for a chance at taking Bela down."

"Just how well do you think you know him?" said Anna. But she was as still as Victor, never flinching from her post even as Dean directed her closer and closer to danger. 

"He'll back off," Dean repeated. Then, as all the ships finally drew close enough that Dean was able to pick out individual faces through his spyglass, he jumped up on the railing and gave a whoop and a jaunty wave to the Impressive. 

Sure enough, his crew roared their approval at their captain's show of impudence. Dean put the telescope back up to his eye just in time to catch a smile flit across Victor Henricksen's face on the opposite deck. 

"They're turning back!" someone shouted. And they were right. At an order from Victor, the Impressive slowed and veered back out to sea. "They're giving up the chase!" came the shouts from the deck. "They're running! You see that? They took one look at us and turned tail!" 

There was a tense moment or two when the Impressive reached the peak of its arc, when it was as close to the Impala as it would come, broadside, and just near enough that its cannons would reach if they chose to fire them. Then the moment passed. The Impressive finished its turn and began sailing away. Victor Henricksen walked the length of his ship just in time to stand on the stern as it drew away from the Impala. Watching Dean watching him through his spyglass, Victor smiled again and gave a tiny, gallant bow. 

One more person who Dean owed a huge favor. 

"Enough celebrating!" Dean snapped at his crew. Their cheers died down immediately and they looked up at him, awaiting orders. Then Dean's serious expression broke into a grin. "Back to your stations. Bela's going the same way we are. Let's show her whose is the faster ship." 

One more cheer went up to the sky as The Impala and the Jewel Thief cut parallel lines through the ocean on their way into the Inferno.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets his next job. Crowley is up to something. Bela gets what she wants. And Anna makes a discovery.

"DEAN!" The voice echoed sweetly inside the wooden warehouse. 

The Impala and the Jewel Thief were anchored and tethered side by side on the Inferno's docks. The Impala was the faster of the two, and Dean would have passed Bela if they had been in open water. But Bela had maneuvered Dean up against the coast as they'd made their way up to the Inferno, blocking him with expert steering and forcing him again and again to either stay in her wake or risk running aground. In the end she had slipped into the inlet just ahead of him, and won their little race. 

Now she leaned over the railing of the Jewel Thief, smirking at Dean, so smug that one would never have guessed that Dean had just saved her sorry freedom and her stupid ship. Her thick brown hair hung windswept around her shoulders. Her graceful fingers were arranged perfectly against her smooth, bare arms. Dean wondered if she had practiced this pose just to make him want to tip her over the side of her own ship and into the estuary. 

But the voice that rang out did not belong to Bela Talbot. It belonged to the woman who was currently vaulting over the railing and shimmying like a monkey down the ropes to the dock in a flurry of auburn hair. "Dean!" she called again, waving with both hands. 

"Hey, Charlie!" Dean couldn't help but smile as he waved back. He jumped down to meet her and swept her up in an embrace so strong that it lifted her a few inches off her feet. 

As soon as he put her down, Charlene Bradbury punched Dean in the arm. "You charmer! You just had to white knight in there and save us. Trying to impress my girl?" They both looked up at the deck of the Jewel Thief where Bela was watching them. As soon as Dean made eye contact with her, Bela turned and moved away from the edge, hiding her face. 

"Yeah, sure," Dean scoffed. "Bela's lucky she had you on that junk boat of hers. If it had been just her, I would have sat back and laughed while she got arrested." 

"You don't mean that," Charlie laughed, even though they both knew that he kind of did. 

Dean had made a family of his fellow sailors – his own crew, Benny, Victor, some of Bobby's contacts – but Charlie was the only one he truly considered his sister. Dean had met her years ago, when she had been in the unwitting employ of rival pirate fleet. She'd been a gifted young mapmaker who unfortunately had not been terribly discerning with her clientele. When Dean had tracked her down and informed her what kind of brigands she was working for, she'd bravely sabotaged their maps before delivering them. But her customers had caught wise, Dean had had to step in, and things had gotten ugly fast. In the end they'd barely escaped, Dean with a variety of bruises and Charlie with a broken arm. And that was Charlie's ignoble introduction to piracy. 

That should have been enough to make anyone want to move inland and never have anything to do with pirates ever again, but Charlie had kept popping up during Dean's jobs. It seemed she'd gotten a taste for danger, and no matter how many times she claimed that all she wanted was a normal life she kept managing to poke her nose into the middle of Dean's business. Finally she'd asked Dean for a place on his crew. She'd had experience on the periphery of the business for a couple of years by then, and combined with her mapmaking skills she had the makings of one of the best navigators to ever sail. But Dean had refused. Charlie deserved a better life than that, and he'd still held out hope that she might come to her senses and settle down somewhere far away from his violent line of work. 

He'd regretted sending her away when, instead of joining the crew of the Impala, she'd taken up with Bela Talbot instead. 

Dean looked up to see Bela sauntering off the Jewel Thief and onto the dock. She placed herself just close enough to Charlie to remind Dean whose first mate was whose. Dean's lip twisted into an involuntary sneer. "Nice job letting the Navy follow you home, Bela," he said. "You don't need to thank me for bailing you out. Just having you owe me one is enough for me."

Bela flashed her eyebrows and smiled like a cat. "Oh, please," she scoffed. The polished diction of her British accent was only slightly tarnished by her years living among slang-slinging colonials. "I was miles ahead of him and pulling away. I would have been out of his sight long before arriving at the Inferno. I do think it's cute when you play the hero, but don't go acting like I asked for your help." 

If Charlie was Dean's sister, then Bela was the in-law who he had to tolerate at family gatherings while they both fantasized about stabbing each other with serving forks. They'd known each other for a long time – since before Charlie came into their lives, before Dean fell in love with Benny, even before Anna became Dean's first mate. They were brought together by one thing: their mutual insurmountable debt to Crowley. And that was where the similarities between them stopped. Dean worked down his debt by grinding out smuggling jobs; Bela made money by running cheap scams and charming her way into her rivals' confidence before robbing everyone blind and running for the hills. Dean's crew was his family; Bela considered her crew expendable, and the rate of turnover and mortality on the Jewel Thief was astounding. Dean came by his debt through no fault of his own; Bela came into hers when she contracted with Crowley to murder her parents and inherit their fortune. Everything about her was ugly, dishonest, and mercenary. Just talking to her filled Dean with so much self-righteous rage that it burned his loins and made him stiffen in his trousers. 

"Enough, both of you," said Anna as she descended to the dock and came up behind Dean. She had never had much patience for the captains' clash of egos. She crossed her arms and pointed her chin toward the doorway opposite the ships. "It's show time." 

All four of them turned to see Crowley enter the structure. He was quickly followed by two bodyguards. Not that he needed them here – it would have been madness to attack Crowley in his own home. Crowley, who always seemed prepared for anything and everything. 

"What a pretty sight," said Crowley with a smirk. "Both my little chickadees home in their roost. All getting along now, I hope?" 

Dean and Bela didn't give him the satisfaction of seeing them fight. They stood at attention and stared at the floor with mouths twisted and set, united for once in their hatred of Crowley. 

Crowley's smile never slipped. "Good. Dean, my boy, I'll unload your ship first. And by 'I'll unload your ship,' I of course mean that my men will unload your ship while you and I chat in your cabin."

"I got here first!" Bela protested. "Why should I have to wait?"

"In my cabin?" said Dean, dry-mouthed. "What about your office?" 

Crowley ignored Bela. To Dean, he said, "Need I remind you that I could say one word and your ship would belong to me? That makes your cabin my office if I want it to be. You got something to say about that?" 

Crowley's tone told Dean that he definitely ought not to have anything to say about that. And once Crowley made up his mind, he tended not to change it. But Dean began stammering uncontrollably anyway while his mind raced trying to figure out how to get Cas out of there before Crowley caught sight of him. If there was one person Dean knew who wouldn't hesitate to butcher a merman and sell him down to the last ounce of flesh, it was Crowley. 

"It's really small in there," Dean blurted out. "If you bring your muscle then someone will have one leg hanging out the door."

Crowley shrugged. "No matter. My bodyguards can stay down here." 

Dean kept trying, even as his excuses spiraled into embarrassing nonsense. "It's messy. Like really gross. I never clean in there. It smells like a bucket of fish guts. There's mildew, lichen growing on every surface, and like, just... semen everywhere, all over the walls. Years' worth of the stuff. You've heard the rumors about me. You know what I get up to in there. Your boots'll stick to the floor, I'm not even being funny."

Bela stared at Dean, alarmed. Charlie looked like she was going to be sick. The only one who didn't look horrified by his little outburst was Anna. When he glanced behind, her eyes were waiting to catch his. She leveled a glare at him that was so pointed that she didn't even have to say aloud, "You are up to something, and I will find out what it is if it kills both of us."

"Riiight," said Crowley, leaning away from Dean a little and wrinkling his nose. "Well, I'm already going to have to scrub my brain with a wire brush after listening to your description, so getting my boots a little sticky shouldn't make much of a difference. Shall we?"

Short of throwing himself on the ground and faking a seizure, Dean was out of excuses. His mind filled with a sort of empty buzzing sensation and possible solutions flitted just out of his grasp. All he could do was fall back on his deep-etched habit of obeying Crowley's orders. And so he led the man back onto his ship and across his deck toward his cabin door. True to his word, Crowley's guards remained behind with Bela and Charlie. But Anna stalked wordlessly after Dean. When Crowley didn't object to her presence, she quickened her pace and walked beside them. 

Dean shot her a glance. He must have looked as much like a caged animal as he felt, because Anna's eyes widened in response to the fear she saw on his face. He grimaced, a silent plea for help. She shook her head minutely. She didn't understand. How could she? Dean had kept the truth from her, and now there was no time and nothing she could do. 

They stopped in front of the door. "So, _Crowley_. You sure you don't want me to _tidy up in there_ before you come in? You know, so you don't _see anything I wouldn't want you to see?_ " Dean said as loudly as he dared. He hoped that his voice would carry through the door and warn Cas, even though he knew that there was nothing Cas could do. The room was too small and sparse to hide him, and there was no exit but the door. 

Crowley snatched the key off Dean's belt impatiently. "I don't know what you're playing at, Winchester," he said as he shoved past Dean and put the key into the hole. "But I'd have thought by now you'd have learned not to test my patience." 

The key clicked in the lock. The buzzing in Dean's head stopped. Suddenly, momentarily, he saw with perfect clarity. He slid back, out of Crowley's line of sight, and drew the dagger out of his belt. Anna noticed. And she still did not understand, but she also drew her dagger. Dean never loved her more than at that moment. Was he about to threaten Crowley? Maim him? Kill him? Even Dean himself didn't know. But Anna was about to stand beside him while he tore everything down around their ears and likely got them both killed, and she didn't even know why. She just trusted him to make the right decision. 

Crowley gave the door a shove. It swung open. And there was Dean's cabin. Bed, bookcase, desk, foot locker, and the giant wooden basin taking up most of the room. The basin was full of water. And nothing else. 

Dean slammed the dagger back into its sheath. Anna hurriedly did the same as Crowley turned to look at them, his eyebrows quirked. "For once in your life, my boy, things aren't as bad as you've made me believe."

This was usually when Dean would have shot back an insolent remark, but it was all he could do not to lean on the doorframe in relief and panic and disbelief. As they all three entered the cabin, Dean's eyes flew to each corner and every piece of furniture. There was absolutely nowhere that Cas could be hiding. And yet Cas had been here, and now he was not. 

"What's this for?" said Crowley, tapping the basin with the toe of his boot. 

"Uh," said Dean. The moment of clarity was over. The buzzing was back, blanking his mind a useless white. He fought his way back to coherency. Wherever Cas had gone, that was a mystery for later. Right now he had to survive this meeting without arousing Crowley's suspicions. "Uh. I was taking a bath."

Crowley squinted at the turbid water that smelled of salt and seaweed. "In ocean water?" 

"Not like I'm gonna bathe in my drinking ration," said Dean, shrugging as naturally as he could when his back and shoulders felt like they were made of nothing but knots. 

Anna valiantly tried to get them back on track. "What did you want to speak to us about, Crowley?" she said. "Is it that job you promised us? The big one?" 

"High risk, high reward," Dean mumbled, remembering Crowley's words from before they'd left for Cuba. 

Crowley spared one more suspicious glance at the basin before looking up, businesslike. "Indeed," he said. "My contacts are prepared. Or they will be by the time you arrive. This one required a good bit of coordination, being so far away."

"How far away?" said Dean, drooping. 

"Pack your bags, sweeties. You're going to France."

Dean felt his throat close up. The last time he'd made the journey across the Atlantic, he'd been first mate to his father. Crossing the open ocean was very different from hopping up and down the coast. It was dangerous. Even without the threat of the Navy and rival outlaws, storms or sickness or shortages of food and water could easily lay waste to a ship. A fair number of ships set out on such a journey and never returned, and those captained by more experienced sailors than Dean. And even if he did return, the round trip would take months at the very least. Months away from land, and comfort, and Sam. But Dean swallowed down his reservations. He hadn't forgotten that this job was the only reason Crowley was letting him keep his ship. "What are we picking up?"

Crowley frowned. "You're picking up a number of parcels, the contents of which are very valuable, very expensive, very delicate, and absolutely none of your business." 

"None of your shipments are any of my business," Dean said, as much to remind himself as to reassure Crowley, "except for what kind of trouble they might bring down on me and mine."

Crowley paused and scrunched his face, and when he spoke again he did so slowly and deliberately, as if being very careful what he might let slip. "One tends to accumulate rivals in this line of business. People who would love to sabotage my hard work, or find a way to profit from it themselves. This particular job may have attracted the attention of one or two interested parties" 

"Interested parties," Dean echoed, swiping a hand down his face. "Meaning people who are gonna try to kill us and take our cargo?" 

Crowley smiled wolfishly. "I told you it would be a dangerous job. You didn't think I said that just because it was on a different continent, did you?" He pulled a card out of his inner pocket and offered it to Dean. On it was printed a few lines of handwritten scrawl – what looked like a name and map coordinates. 

Dean didn't take it. "You gonna give us any more information about who we might be up against?" 

"No," said Crowley, unconcerned. 

"You gonna tell us what makes this cargo so special that people are willing to kill over it?"

Crowley just laughed. "What on earth makes you think I'd do that? Look, boy. I don't keep you around just for your recklessness and extreme gullibility. I rather enjoy the fact that you _don't tend to ask questions_. Right now you are asking more questions than I'm frankly comfortable with." He held his chin in his fingers and frowned a bit. "What say we up the stakes? Have you ever seen someone keelhauled?" 

Dean had. John Winchester had keelhauled one of his own crew when he'd found out that the man was a spy for Azazel and the Yellow Eye. He'd run a rope under the ship from stem to stern. The man had been tied up in one end of it, blubbering and squirming. Three sailors had pulled the other end and over the bow the man had gone, dragged the entire length of the boat underwater until he came up on the other side. He hadn't been crying anymore then, and he hadn't moved. Dean had watched them pull him back up onto the deck. His body had been a wreck – his clothes torn to ribbons, his back and buttocks and legs flayed open by the sharp shells of barnacles and mussels clinging to the underside of the ship where he'd been dragged. When John Winchester had prodded the man's chest with the toe of his boot, water and white foam had bubbled up out of his nose and mouth. 

"Yeah," said Dean. 

Crowley took a step toward Dean and leaned close, so close that their faces were almost touching. "If my property isn't in my hands on time – safe, intact, and unopened," he said quietly, "I'll keelhaul you." 

Dean licked his lips and cleared his throat. He managed a nervous smile as he quipped, "Seems excessive."

Crowley wasn't done. "If I find out that you've been showing an undue interest in the nature of my private dealings," he said, "I'll keelhaul _her_." He pointed at Anna. 

The last, weak vestiges of Dean's smile vanished. "Understood," he said. 

"Good." Crowley grabbed Dean's hand and slapped the card into it. The card containing what little information Dean was allowed about the job. And with that, Crowley strode out the door and back off the ship with a disdainful sniff. 

Dean and Anna were left alone. Their eyes met. Anna lifted her eyebrows, waiting patiently for Dean to say something. 

Unfortunately, all that he could think of to say was, "Well, that happened." 

"Dean..."

"We'll have a lot of preparations to make before setting out," Dean said quickly, cutting her off. "We'll need way more supplies than we usually carry. I wouldn't mind a navigator either, one who knows their way around the currents out there. Heh, maybe Bela will let me borrow Charlie if I ask nicely."

" _Dean._ " Her voice wasn't angry. It was helpless. 

Dean sighed deeply. Anna didn't care about the upcoming job; they'd deal with it as they dealt with everything Crowley threw their way. She wanted to know why Dean had come within a hair's breadth of killing Crowley rather than letting him set foot inside Dean's cabin. "I'll tell you," he promised. "I'll explain everything. Soon. And when I do, you'll understand. You just have to trust me."

Anna was silent for a moment. Then, "I've show you a lot of trust today, Dean Winchester."

"More than I deserve," Dean agreed. 

With a disbelieving shake of her head, Anna turned and left the cabin. Dean couldn't stop himself from taking one more look around the room before he followed her, his eyes hitting every surface, every nook, every crevice. 

Cas still wasn't there.

\-----

Crowley's workers were on and off the two ships for the rest of the afternoon, carrying crates and bags and chests out of the Impala's hold first, and then the Jewel Thief's. Dean had used to try to supervise the unloading process – after all, it was his ship and he didn't much like the idea of Crowley's people crawling all over it like ants with no one to watch them – but eventually he'd given up. The unloading process was quick and efficient, and Dean only seemed to get in the way. Instead, he spent the day with his crew and Bela's where they were working together to pitch a small camp on the outskirts of the stand of buildings that was the Inferno. It wasn't anything more than a couple of campfires and hammocks, but the sailors didn't need any more than that. They mingled and laughed and carried on and forgot their troubles for a few hours while they caught up with their friends on their sister ship. 

For those who made their living on the sea, it was hard to maintain friendships outside of one's own crew. The Impala had a couple of ports that it visited more often than others, but even their most frequent berths like Stanford and Havana they might only see a handful of times per year. Friends and lovers moved away, or moved on, in their absence. 

Friendships between fellow sailors were simpler. Everyone understood the realities of life on the sea. So, like with Dean and Benny, if they didn't happen to anchor in the same port for many months, it didn't matter. When they finally crossed paths again, they would pick up just where they'd left off. 

And the Jewel Thief was special. Since she was also part of Crowley's fleet, Dean ended up seeing her more often than almost any other ship. It was little wonder that his crew had struck up fast friendships with Bela's people despite their captains' constant squabbling. Faces lit up in recognition as the two crews came together to enjoy their short time at port. 

When Dean arrived, he was still reeling from his close call and subsequent meeting with Crowley. He wasn't sure if he was so worried about the job that he couldn't think about Cas, or if he was so worried about Cas that he couldn't think about the job, or if he just couldn't think at all. He put both worries aside for now as he joined the hum of activity in the little camp. 

He found Charlie sitting alone by one of the fires, trying to heat up a piece of salt pork that she'd skewered on a stick. "You're not gonna turn it back into a pork chop that way, you know," he said warmly. 

Charlie grinned at him as he joined her by the fire. "I know," she said, pulling the smoking piece of dehydrated meat out of the fire and gnawing on it experimentally. "I'm just waiting until we get paid. Then I'll be eating steak." 

Once both ships were unloaded, Crowley would determine whether everything met his specifications. If nothing was missing or damaged he would pay the captains, and the captains would pay their crews. Of course, said crews were tired and hungry and sick of eating ship food for weeks on end, so Crowley had a nice racket set up where the crews would immediately spend a chunk of their pay on good food and finery at his company store. At a markup, of course, for the location and convenience. 

Bela's crew could afford to splurge like that and still have enough left over to constitute a decent paycheck. But if Dean's crew wanted to eat steak tonight, they wouldn't be buying much else until their next pay day. 

"Guess that's why you've stuck with your asshole girlfriend," Dean muttered. "She pays better than I can afford." 

Charlie stopped chewing her pork and tossed the rest of it so it bounced off the side of Dean's face. "Self-pity doesn't suit you, Dean. I'm with Bela because I love her." 

Dean shuddered. "Gross," he said. 

"Excuse me?" said Charlie, frowning. "Suddenly you have a problem with me and women?"

"Not women," Dean was quick to say. "Just _her _."__

__Charlie's expression softened. She leaned her head on him and said, "You might feel different if you spent some time getting to know her. She's like you: she's got a lot going on under the surface."_ _

__"When she's got uncontrollable greed and _murdering her family_ on the surface, I don't really feel the need to go looking deeper," said Dean smugly. _ _

__Charlie puffed herself up and seemed about to respond, but just then Dean spotted Anna coming up to join them._ _

__"Oh shit," he muttered, cutting Charlie off before she could begin, and he scurried away. Normally he would have liked nothing better than to share a seat by a campfire with two of his best girls, but at the moment he dreaded Anna's questions about the whole fiasco with Crowley. And if she brought it up in front of Charlie, he'd have two people making him feel like a jerk for not being able to answer with anything better than vague excuses and lies._ _

__So he ran away, over to the other side of the little camp. His crew was sitting scattered in small groups around him, interspersed with Bela's people. He knew most of them well. He could have effortlessly slid into any of the conversations going on. But Anna was scanning the crowd for him, and in his panic he sat down next to Bela Talbot._ _

__She looked up from the ladylike, pearl-handled pistol that she was cleaning and said disinterestedly, "Fancy meeting you here."_ _

__Dean hunkered down and tried to avoid Anna's eye contact. "Shut up, Bela. I'm just hiding from Anna."_ _

__"Oh, that bodes well for your relationship," Bela laughed._ _

__"Shut up!" Dean chanced a look around. Anna wasn't looking for him anymore. She was greeting Charlie with a hug and they appeared to be laughing at some private joke. Suddenly Dean felt very foolish and more than a little bit jealous._ _

__Bela clicked the last piece of her gun back into place and holstered it. "Are you quite finished acting like a self-absorbed child?"_ _

__"Self-absorbed?" Dean muttered. "That's rich, coming from you."_ _

__Bela ignored him. "Because if so, maybe you can tell me what was so important that Crowley didn't even feel safe discussing it in his own office?"_ _

__It took Dean a moment to catch her meaning. "When he asked to talk in my cabin instead? It was nothing. Just giving me my next job."_ _

__"How long have you been in Crowley's service?" said Bela, rolling her eyes. "He doesn't set foot on our ships unless he has to."_ _

__"He gave me my next job. That's all."_ _

__"And what, pray tell, is the job?"_ _

__Dean was fairly certain that Crowley wouldn't want him to share the particulars. But it was a big enough country, and far enough away, that he felt safe telling her, "I'm picking something up in France."_ _

__Bela gave him that intense stare of hers, with her eyes that cut like crystals. She sized him up like a piece of meat she was considering to buy, wrinkled her nose as if she found him less than adequate, and then sighed as she accepted that she was going to pay for him anyway. "Something's up," she said in a quiet, clipped tone. "But we can't talk here. Meet me in my cabin at sundown."_ _

__"Your cabin?"_ _

__"I'd make it yours, but your description earlier today has rather put me off the place," said Bela with a smirk. "Sundown. Don't be late." And with that, she got up and went to join Charlie and Anna._ _

__Dean watched them for a few minutes. Charlie's hand was on Bela's knee. Anna had kicked her shoes off and was warming her feet by the fire. Bela said something that made Charlie laugh and Anna hide a smile._ _

__After a while, Dean got up and went back to the deserted Impala._ _

__\-----_ _

__The basin in the middle of Dean's cabin had long ago stopped being a nuisance and begun being a normal part of his life. Stepping over it in his way to his bed was as natural as walking. Dumping and refilling it each day was as routine as putting on his boots. And as he'd gotten used to its presence in his room, so had he gotten very used to its occupant's presence in his life. Cas's face turning up to greet him was exactly what he expected to see every time he opened that door._ _

__So when he opened the door and Cas was sitting placidly in his basin, turning his face up to greet him, it took Dean a second to remember that anything was wrong. That Cas's earlier absence hadn't been a strange waking dream._ _

__"Hello, Dean," said Cas as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened._ _

__Dean shut the door behind him and fixed Cas with a stare that he hoped was just as intense as the ones Cas had been casting his way for the last few weeks. He knew he had managed it when Cas looked away, the faintest of flushes on the tips of his ears. "Where the hell were you?" he demanded._ _

__Cas still wouldn't meet his eyes. "I was here," he said. "I'm always here."_ _

__"Bullshit!" Dean shouted, loud enough to make Cas receded ever so slightly into the water. "I was in here with Crowley and Anna, and this place was empty!"_ _

__At that, Cas looked up with wide eyes. "Crowley was here?"_ _

__"Yes!"_ _

__"You didn't stop him from finding me?" Cas looked to be somewhere between frightened and hurt, but Dean wasn't about to lose track of his own righteous indignation._ _

__"No, no, don't you fucking do that," he growled. "I was ready to shank Crowley's ugly ass if he found you, but he didn’t, because you _weren't fucking here_. There's nowhere to hide in here. The deck was crawling with sailors, so you didn't leave through the door. I mean... where the fuck did you _go?_ " _ _

__Cas sat there miserably, caught in his lie but unable or unwilling to go back on it. "I was here," he said again._ _

__Dean threw his hands up in exasperation. "Fine!" he shouted. He stormed to his bed and flopped into it petulantly._ _

__For a long time, neither of them would look at the other. Cas curled up in the bottom of his basin as if the thin barrier of water could separate him from Dean's anger and worry. Dean stared at the wall. The dim light of the sun was yellow where it crept through the opening of the covered dock outside, filtered through the glass porthole cover, and splashed in a circle on the wood of the cabin. As the minutes stretched on, Dean watched the yellow turn the peachy-red of sunset._ _

__Bela would be waiting for him soon. Bela didn't like to wait. And yet Dean felt sick when he thought of walking out that door, not knowing if he would come back to find Cas where he'd left him or just an empty basin._ _

__He rolled over in bed and looked down. The curve of Cas's back was just below the water's surface, curled up in a bed of tentacles. He reached in and tapped Cas on his shoulder._ _

__Cas emerged slowly, wary and dripping._ _

__"Here," said Dean. He reached under his pillow and pulled out the pistol he kept loaded there. He handed it to Cas. "This is the Inferno. Crowley's turf. I'm gonna do my best to keep you safe, but as long as we're here I can't promise that no one but me is gonna walk through that door."_ _

__Cas turned the pistol over in his hands. He ended up holding the barrel, the muzzle pointed at his belly._ _

__"Fuck, don't point it at yourself!" Dean snapped, grabbing Cas's hands and turning the gun around. "And don't let it get wet either, or it won't fire when you need it. Look, hold it like this..." He molded Cas's hands around the grip. "If you hear that door opening, I want this gun in your hands. If I'm not the first one through the door, shoot."_ _

__"I've never shot a gun before," Cas admitted. He was holding the thing limp-wristed and bent-elbowed against his chest._ _

__"Yeah, I can tell," Dean sighed. "I don't have the time or space to let you practice on targets, so you're gonna have to go on instinct. Just point the business end at the door and squeeze the trigger. Don't think about it too hard. The room's small. You won't miss. Just point and shoot."_ _

__Cas looked down at the pistol in his hand, then back up at Dean. "And what then?"_ _

__"Then I sort out the rest," said Dean wearily. "But at least you won't be dead, okay?"_ _

__"Okay." Cas replaced the gun under Dean's pillow, leaving the edge of the handle sticking out where he could easily reach it._ _

__The peach-colored circle of light on the wall was turning blood red. "I gotta go," said Dean. He hopped over the edge of the basin and moved for the door. Just before ducking through it, he poked his head back into the room and pointed his finger at Cas with as serious a look on his face as he could muster._ _

__"Point and shoot!" he said._ _

__\-----_ _

__The sun was just touching the horizon when Dean knocked on Bela's door. She answered, not in the long skirt and leather tunic she had been wearing earlier, but in a silk robe that ended at mid-thigh._ _

__"Just who are you trying to impress?" Dean scoffed, eyeing her long, shapely legs._ _

__"I refuse to apologize for being comfortable in my own home," said Bela. "Are you coming in, or not?"_ _

__Bela's cabin was as elegant as her choice of clothing. It was much bigger than Dean's, and furnished with a lovely bed complete with ornate headboard and a gleaming hardwood desk. The desk was backed up to a window – not a porthole, an actual window. Dean had no trouble imagining Bela interrogating people from behind that desk, her legs crossed and her fingers tented, the light through the window blinding her adversary while highlighting her silhouette. On the other walls were paintings and even a small tapestry. Even the carpet was rich and plush. Dean looked down to find that he was tracking mud onto it._ _

__"What did you want to talk about?" said Dean. "Or did you just want me to show off your legs to someone other than Charlie?"_ _

__Bela sat in the chair behind her desk, crossed her legs, and tented her fingers. Sure enough, when Dean looked at her the last rays of the setting sun made him squint. Not to be outdone, he walked around the desk and leaned against the windowsill. When Bela turned to face him, she was the one staring into the light. She scowled, but she still answered his question. "Crowley's up to something."_ _

__Dean rolled his eyes. "When is Crowley _not_ up to something?"_ _

__"This is different," said Bela, and something in her tone made Dean shut up and listen. "He's been working on something on the side for almost eighteen months now. Jobs that aren't in his official leger. He sends people to pick up shipments, but none of his suppliers know where those shipments came from, and no one knows what they contain."_ _

__"So he's using new suppliers. Branching out."_ _

__Bela shook her head. "People think Crowley is diabolical. He's not. He's predictable. Just like all people who love money and power are predictable."_ _

__"Including you?" Dean interrupted._ _

__That got a faint smile out of Bela. "Especially me. But this, what he's up to lately... There's some kind of pattern to it that he's been desperately trying to hide. I've only caught on to it in the last couple of months. Connections here and there, like all these shipments are part of the same project. Like he's collecting something. But I don't know what it is or why he wants it, and I can't predict where this is going. And now he's sending you to France..."_ _

__"It's a job just like any other job," said Dean. "I don't care what Crowley is up to."_ _

__"Maybe you should," said Bela, with a pitying look. "Maybe you _would_ if you knew." _ _

__That made the second time Dean had been warned to take a closer interest in his employer in as many weeks. Bela still had the sun in her eyes, but it was Dean who looked away._ _

__Bela stood and walked delicately over to a cupboard against her wall. She took out a bottle of dark rum, poured two glasses, and offered one to Dean with a sigh of, "God, you're useless."_ _

__Dean scowled at the glass, but he took it and knocked it back in one gulp. "Then why are you bothering to warn me about whatever Crowley is doing?"_ _

__"I'm not warning you," said Bela. She quickly finished off her own glass and refilled them both. "I'm trying to pump you for information. It's not my fault you never have any."_ _

__Dean chuckled as he raised the glass to his lips again. He meant to sip at it this time, but somehow he ended up drinking the whole thing in one gulp. Bela's glasses were tiny, and her rum was sweet. He set the glass back on top of the cabinet and said, "Come on, Bela. You're gonna keep pretending you invited me to your cabin alone _just_ to talk about Crowley?" _ _

__Bela's eyes betrayed nothing. "What else did you have in mind?"_ _

__Dean's eyes dropped to the thick trail of hair where it draped over Bela's shoulder, its curls licking at the tops of her breasts. He reached out to twine his fingers into it._ _

__His hand hadn't even touched her when Bela lashed out, quick as a viper, and slapped Dean across his face. His head snapped to one side. His cheek stung where her fingernails had hit him on the backhand, and he thought he tasted a brief flash of copper. Slowly, he turned his head back straight to face her. They locked eyes for a brief moment, both of them breathing a little harder than they intended and trying to hide greedy smiles. Then Dean turned, offering Bela his face. She slapped it again obligingly._ _

__This time it was hard enough to make Dean stagger. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, "Charlie okay with this?"_ _

__They'd been doing this for long enough that the steps were like a dance. There was always some spontaneity – like the slap, that had been a good one. But most of the steps stayed the same. Bela always wore the same silk, leg-baring robe as a signal for what she was after. If she'd come to the door in anything else, even naked, then Dean would have known not to touch her. They always met in Bela's cabin, as it was bigger and more comfortable and Bela had often said that she wouldn't set foot on the Impala even if she were drowning. And most importantly, neither of them would ever, ever admit that they'd planned this. The only way they could stomach being in a relationship with each other, even one as casual and physical as this, was if every time they were intimate they pretended that it had been nothing more than a particularly embarrassing fluke._ _

__And there was one more step: every time Bela engaged in relationship extracurriculars, Charlie had to sign off on it._ _

__Bela answered the question with a grin. "I asked her before we even made port. She's fine. She also says to tell you you're a giant baby for running away from Anna, by the way." She didn't ask if Dean had gotten Anna's permission. Dean and Anna had different rules than Bela and Charlie did. Anna didn't care what Dean got up to, as long as he didn't knock anyone up or bring home any rashes._ _

__But Dean didn't want to worry about Anna. He reached out, and this time Bela let him take a handful of her hair and twist it around his fist. He yanked her head back hard enough to hurt her, but she was still grinning triumphantly when he kissed her._ _

__They didn't kiss like Dean did with Anna, or with Benny, or with anyone. There wasn't an ounce of affection in it. Even their kisses were a fight. All teeth, snarling against each other's lips as Dean pulled harder on her hair and Bela tore open Dean's shirt, two buttons flying away and rattling on the polished floor._ _

__She had him topless in seconds, and before he could even fumble her sash from around her waist she'd unbuttoned his pants and shoved them around his ankles. One more kiss, softer than the ones before, and she gave him a shove that sent him wobbling and crashing to the floor. His elbows were skinned and his tailbone bruised, but he didn't dare flinch. He wiggled the rest of the way out of his pants and was ready when Bela came down after him. Instead of letting her keep the upper hand, he flipped her and tore open her robe. The sash kept it hanging around her waist, but her breasts were bared._ _

__They grappled on the hardwood, neither of them willing to surrender even long enough to move to the bed. Dean kept trying to pin Bela's slender arms, but she was as slippery as an eel. When he finally managed to catch one of her wrists and pin it to the floor, she reached down with her free hand and squeezed his balls hard enough to make him grunt and release her. Then she was rolling him over to straddle him, her teeth at his throat, jacking him off so hard that it hurt. He gripped at her buttocks and the skin of her back, clenching his fingers again and again to paint a mosaic of fingernail-shaped bruises._ _

__Only when Dean was swelling in her hand and whimpering in pain did Bela let him sit up off the floor. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders and let him carry her to bed. As soon as he laid her down on the sheets, she was at him again. But this time Dean was ready. He caught her hand out of the air as it rose to strike him, and twisted it behind her back. He pressed down. Despite her struggles, her face was forced down against the mattress. Dean trailed his free hand across her shoulders, down her back, over her rear, and between her legs. She was slick and open, and his fingers fit inside easily. A couple of strokes, and she was still straining against his grip, growling in frustration. So he angled his fingers down and fucked her with them, hard and fast enough to make her whole body rock forward with each thrust. She relaxed into his grip, and pressed her face deeper into the sheets to muffle a satisfied groan._ _

__As soon as he got complacent, as soon as his grip loosened, she seized the opportunity. She yanked her arm free, flipped over, and grabbed each of Dean's nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. Dean yelped in spite of himself, and raised his hands to slap hers away from his chest. She squeezed, hard, and his precise slap became a sort of undignified, flinching flail._ _

__She pulled him down on top of her, and it became a scuffling fight once more. For a few seconds they were all knees and elbows, grabbing and hitting each other hard enough to bruise and getting tangled in the sheets as they rolled over and over. For a moment Dean had one of Bela's nipples between his teeth, but she planted a knee in his groin that made him double over. He caught her by the jaw. She bit his hand until she drew blood. He slapped her hard enough to leave a handprint on her thigh. She elbowed him in the ribs. Winded, he finally managed to control all of her swinging limbs and pin her by lying on top of her._ _

__"Don't move," he panted. Bela kept condoms in a box under her bed. Dean shifted his grip so he held both of Bela's wrists in one of his hands, and leaned over to find it._ _

__He pulled one out, but he didn't have time to think about putting it on. While he was leaning over the edge of the bed, Bela gave a twist of her hips and they both rolled off the bed and onto the wooden floor with a thud. Bela ended up on top. She snatched the condom out of Dean's hand and rolled it onto his cock._ _

__She sat on him, swallowing him up in one smooth motion. And then he stopped fighting, and let his head fall back against the floor. Bela had won. Bela always won. Truth be told, that was the way Dean liked it._ _

__She celebrated her victory by riding him into the ground. She straddled him and bucked until they were both arching and groaning. If Dean tried to relax, exhausted, Bela would reach down and tweak his nipple to make him gasp and whine._ _

__They were both so primed that it was over in less than a minute. Dean came first, his fingernails scratching against the wood floor. Bela didn't even slow down. Even when Dean shrank and fell out of her she kept grinding against him until he was near sobbing and she was coming. And even when she was finished and her vulva was too sensitive to keep going, she took Dean's limp cock in her hand and gave a couple more hard jerks just to watch him squirm._ _

__She left him twitching and panting on the floor. She used the edge of her sheets to wipe her own mess from between her legs and the insides of her thighs. She hiked her mussed-up robe back over her shoulders and re-tied the sash._ _

__Then she looked down at Dean where he lay on the floor and said, "Are you still here?" And she went to bed._ _

__\-----_ _

__The night was dark when Anna left the campfires and headed back for the ship. Dean had been gone for over an hour. Bela had quietly slipped back to the docks as well, after waiting just long enough that her departure couldn't be linked to Dean's. As if the fact that they hadn't left together could hide the certainty that they were going to end up in the same place. As soon as Bela was out of sight, Charlie and Anna had shared a knowing glance and a private laugh._ _

__Anna had excused herself soon after that, leaving the glow of the fires and the hum of contented conversation behind. She needed to get back to the ship now that Crowley's people were finished with it and Dean had surely left to join Bela in her cabin, but before any of the crew returned to their bunks. When it was empty. Or at least as empty as she could reasonably expect it to be._ _

__Because even with Dean on the Jewel Thief and the crew outside, Anna no longer believed that there was no one on the ship. It had taken Crowley's visit and Dean's near-mutiny for her to put it together, but she was finally sure. Dean hadn't been keeping her out of his bed all these weeks. He'd been keeping her away from that basin._ _

__She climbed aboard the dark and deserted deck. Where she would have made the turn to her own cabin, she went the other way, toward Dean's. She stared at the lock. Then, just in case she'd been wrong about Dean being gone, she lifted her hand and knocked twice._ _

__Immediately she pressed her ear to the door. Through the wood, muffled and soft, came the distinct sound of water sloshing. Not from the waves of the estuary below the ship. From inside the room._ _

__It took her longer to wrestle with her conscience than it did for her to pick the lock. The mechanism opened with a click. Anna turned the handle and gave the door a gentle push._ _

__She found herself staring down the barrel of a pistol. Wrapped around the grip were two hands. They were holding it all wrong, but they were steady. So were the arms they were attached to – elbows locked and shoulders hunched. Those arms belonged to a young, dark-haired man. He was half-hidden in shadow, but Anna could see where his lower body disappeared into the basin and the dark outlines of tentacles spilled over the edges to drip water onto the floor._ _

__Anna waited. Slowly, the man's face went from resolute determination to stark disbelief. The pistol's aim lowered from her face to her chest, and then to the floor._ _

__"Sister?"_ _

__"Hello, Castiel," said Anna. "It's been a long time."_ _


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets some answers. Anna gets some action. And Cas's journey home draws near its end.

The improvised tent camp on the edges of the Inferno was gone with only a few scorched patches of earth to mark where the fires had been. The sailors who had passed the night there were back aboard their ships, their pockets fat with coin and their belongings packed away in preparation for their next journey. The Impala had been towed out of the dock and was unfurling its sails to inch its way down the winding estuary. It would continue until it found the ocean, and then turn north toward Stanford and home. 

Bela watched it go from where she stood on the deck of her ship. It remained tied at the dock, for now. She would follow soon, and head south in search of more riches to bring home to the man who held her leash. But for now she simply enjoyed the sight of the Impala sailing into the sunrise, and wondered if she would ever see it again. 

The last time she'd crossed the Atlantic, she'd been a girl of fourteen. She could still see the view from the life boat of the masts disappearing beneath the waves, the bits of debris bobbing to the surface in the wake of the ship as it made its way to the bottom with its cargo of souls. A stranger had placed a coat around her shoulders and tried to comfort her, but Bela's eyes had been dry that night. She'd known even then that the ocean was treacherous, and Crowley more treacherous still. 

She thought she'd found a way to turn the treachery of others to her own benefit. But in the end she'd only exchanged one cage for another. 

Dean was in a cage, too. The difference was, he couldn't seem to see the bars closing in around him. 

When she heard someone approaching her from behind, she didn't bother to turn. She recognized the soft, quick footfalls. A moment later Charlie leaned against the railing beside her, their shoulders touching. 

Charlie didn't mince words. "Why didn't you ever tell Dean the real reason you dealt with Crowley?" 

"Why would I?" Bela mumbled. 

"He thinks you murdered your parents for money." 

Bela gave a bitter little half-laugh and turned her head to nuzzle her face into Charlie's hair. "Just because I fuck him occasionally doesn't mean I care one whit about what Dean Winchester thinks. You know the truth. That's enough for me."

Charlie kissed Bela's forehead. But her voice was still worried when she said, "What about France?"

The brightness of the sunrise was swallowing the Impala up. Bela turned away from it to look into Charlie's eyes. "I told him what I know," she said. "Whatever happens now, it’s out of our hands." 

"You might not care what he thinks," said Charlie. "But you care what happens to him." 

The Impala was gone. It was the Jewel Thief's turn to leave the Inferno. Bela pushed herself away from the railing and made for the wheel, her heels clacking against the deck. "Why should I?" she said as she went. "He doesn't care what happens to me." 

\-----

The crew of the Impala had made the trip between the Inferno and Stanford many times. Once they were in open water, the ship practically ran itself. Enough so that Dean was able to step away from the deck and disappear into his cabin. Anna saw him go, and followed. 

Dean held the door open for her. They stepped through in silence. The only sound was Cas breaking the water's surface by popping his head up to greet them. Dean closed the door and locked it behind. 

Then it was just the three of them. 

"Okay," said Dean. "Explain." 

When he'd returned to his cabin the night before to find his first mate sitting calmly on his bed and Cas sitting calmly in his basin, both of them looking up at him with the same expectant, vaguely guilty expression, he'd crawled into bed and declared that as long as no one was dying and the ship wasn't sinking, he didn't want to know. But morning had come and he was ready to hear about whatever fresh entanglement had affected his life. 

Cas and Anna glanced at each other, each waiting for the other to speak. Finally Cas sighed and gestured to Anna. "I told you about my garrison," he said. "Anael is my captain."

"I used to be," Anna corrected him. "And my name is Anna Milton."

Cas shot her a funny look – affection shot through with betrayal and anger. "She chose to abandon her station years ago, and joined the human world. None of us knew what had become of her." 

Anna didn't dispute any part of that. "It took me several years to learn enough about human customs and behavior to pass effectively. But by the time I met you, I..." 

"Wait." Dean sat on the edge of his bed and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Hold up. Go back to the part where... you're a mer-woman?" 

Anna sat beside him and placed a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry I never told you."

"But not sorry you left," said Cas darkly. 

"No," said Anna, her eyes flashing. "I won't apologize for that. Only for the pain I know my departure caused you." 

"And what about the pain it caused our brothers and sisters?" said Cas. "The turmoil it brought on our garrison? The..."

"Stop," said Dean. "Look, I'm sorry to keep making this all about me, but... can we go back one more time to the part where you're a mer-woman? Because I'm still stuck there." He gestured emphatically at Anna's lower body. Her legs were wrapped in tall boots and long trousers and one was crossed over the other. They were undeniably legs. Dean knew. He had seen them often enough. Touched them, squeezed them, even licked her feet. He knew every inch of her body, and every inch of it was human. 

Anna glanced at Cas and shrugged apologetically before saying, "We can change our form at will. When I left my garrison, I also left behind the body I was born with. I chose this one instead. It better suited the life I wanted for myself." 

"You're not supposed to know that," Cas added matter-of-factly, for Dean's benefit. 

Dean couldn't stop staring at Anna's legs. But he finally tore his eyes away to fix Cas with an accusatory stare. "You can do this too?" he demanded. "You could have become human at any time? You could do it right now, if you wanted to?" 

"I don't want to," said Cas in a clipped tone. 

"Why not?"

Cas glanced at Anna's legs, still crossed gracefully. "Because it hurts," he said. 

"We can't truly become human," Anna explained with a sigh. "Only take on human form. My body remembers what it's supposed to be, and it fights me. It hurts to change. It hurts to maintain the change. Every step I take on these legs is a reminder that I'm not meant to have them." She placed her hands on her knees and gripped them until the skin under her fingernails turned white. 

"And yet you endure it," said Cas in disbelief. 

"It is worth it," Anna replied. "To be in control of my own destiny, free of the garrison's influence. It's a price I gladly pay." 

Cas's tentacles swarmed under the water. "To be free of your duties, you mean."

"My _duties_ ," Anna muttered, her voice weary. 

Dean waved a hand impatiently. "Sorry, go back again. Cas... even if it wouldn't have been fun, don't you think it would have solved some of our problems if you'd just grown some legs for the last few weeks? And I don't just mean keeping that damn basin around, I mean people trying to kill you!" 

"Such a transformation is not a minor inconvenience," Cas snapped. "It's unnatural. It would be a violation of my very self." He shot a pointed glare at Anna. 

Anna stood. "If you have no more questions for me, Dean, I'm going to get back to work." 

"Wait, Anna!" Dean jumped up and followed her out of the cabin, closing the door behind him and leaving Cas to sulk alone. 

As soon as the door closed, Anna whirled to face Dean. They stopped there in the brief corridor where they were far enough away from Dean's cabin and from the deck that neither Cas nor the crew were likely to overhear. She didn't mince words. "Don't trust him, Dean," she said. 

"What are you talking about?" said Dean. "I thought he was your brother."

Anna nodded. "He is, and I love him. But you shouldn't trust him. I know my own garrison, and I know who they take orders from. They always have an agenda. Always. I don't know what he's doing here, but he's here for a reason."

Dean scoffed. "He told you what happened, right? He's here because he got stabbed and I dragged him aboard. He didn't even want to be here. The only agenda he has is getting home." 

Anna shook her head and looked unsure. "Castiel has a big heart," she allowed. "But he's always been a good soldier. He follows orders unquestioningly. I don't believe it was a coincidence that the two of you met, nor do I believe it was a coincidence that he ended up on this ship."

"What, you think he'd hurt us?" 

That made Anna pause and cock her head as if her own answer surprised her. "No," she said finally. "That's what I feared, at first. But if his orders were to harm you, I don't think he would have allowed himself to become so fond of you." 

Dean's ears grew hot.

"But," said Anna, "when I was captain of Castiel's garrison, even I didn't know the true scope of all my orders. Whatever he's doing, he could be putting us in danger without even realizing it."

"He's not doing anything," Dean protested.

"Where was he when Crowley visited your cabin?" Dean had no answer for that. "Be careful," she warned as she turned to go back to the deck. 

"Anna..." said Dean. She looked back, her eyebrows arched. "I should have told you sooner. About Cas."

She shook her head. "You were protecting him. As I once did."

That reminded Dean once more of where Anna had come from, and his eyes flicked unbidden down to her legs. 

She caught him staring, and waited until he looked up at her face again. She met him there with a smile. "I'm still me," she promised. 

"Yeah, I know," said Dean. "I just... how old are you?"

Anna gave him the same answer Cas had, before. "Old."

"Cas is your _brother_..." Dean breathed, his hand going to his throat. He felt like he was sucking air through a reed. 

"He is," said Anna calmly. "And he has known me a long time. But our garrison was... is... very strict. Very restrictive. Those who do not fit the mold learn to fake it well enough to blend in. So, for the same reasons I left, I never allowed myself to express the full measure of my thoughts and feelings to my brethren. The person you met and made your first mate – that is who I chose to be, and that is who I am. Castiel may have known me longer, but I promise, you know me better." 

"Why me?"

"You weren't my first choice," she admitted. "When I started sailing, I wanted to be a captain. Not the kind I was before, with the layers upon layers of plans and schemes reaching so high up the chain that no one really knows what they're trying to accomplish. I wanted to be the one giving the orders. To have a ship and a crew and the open ocean, and no one to tell me where to go. There were plenty of boats I could have sailed with whose captains would have eventually retired and given me command. But I chose you, even though I know you'll never give up the Impala."

"Why?"

"You needed me." 

Dean couldn't argue with that. "You could still do it," he said. "Get on a different boat. Work up the ranks again. You'd be a good captain."

Anna's smile grew even as it saddened. "But then what would you do without me?"

\-----

An easy wind filled the Impala's sails, and the sun shone through delicate holes in the lace of clouds above. Her prow splashed through the gentle waves as she cut a path to the north. Dean peered up into the light. The sun warmed his face and made the insides of his eyelids flash red. 

He cracked open his eyes to see Becky Rosen's short figure clambering through the rigging. He smiled up at her. She climbed like a monkey now, but a few years ago she would have fallen and broken her neck. She'd been hopeless when Dean had met her. She'd never left her father's farmstead, but she'd spent her childhood devouring stories about the great pirates. Edward Teach, Calico Jack, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and even the modern ones like Jean Lafitte and John Winchester. She could recite their careers of infamy forward and back, and she'd cultivated a troubling obsession with John Winchester's handsome young sons. When she first came to Dean, begging for a place on his ship, she'd been insufferable. But within a season she'd proved herself equal to the work, and her childish love for Sam and Dean had simmered itself down to simple admiration and loyalty. It turned out that all Rosen had ever needed was for someone to take her seriously. 

Dean lowered his eyes to the deck, where a giant of a man was hauling coils of rope that weighed more than Dean did. A slender young man scurried along beside him, pointing and directing him. As far as Dean knew, the giant had no name but Golem; the young man was Aaron Bass. The Thule Society had pursued them both throughout Europe – Aaron and his enormous bodyguard – until they'd taken refuge in the colonies and aboard the Impala. Dean figured that harboring fugitives from a secret society would come back to bite him one day, but in the meantime Aaron and his Golem were an incredible team. 

Layla Rourke stood near the bow, a sextant held close to her eye. She cut a graceful figure with her striking profile and hair the color of honey. To look at her, you'd never know she was sick. Layla had grown up in the swamps of Michigan, and when she was twenty-eight the malaria had nearly killed her. It had come back twice more in the years since then, each time worse than before. She knew that it would come for her again one day. She knew that she would not survive. So she skipped out to the coast, hopped a ship, and learned to sail. She never turned her face away from her fate – she'd told Dean the day he hired her that she didn't have long to live – but neither was she content to sit and wait for death. Her quiet faith in the face of her own oncoming doom stopped Dean in his tracks every day. 

The sound of shrill arguing rose up behind Dean. He turned to see a knot of crew members surrounding a map, pointing, and bickering. He didn't need to look any more closely to know who they were. Harry, Ed, Spruce, and Maggie were the children of merchants, each of them off a different trading vessel. They had grown up on the sea and spent most of their childhoods dreaming of the roguish glamor of piracy. They didn't actually have the first clue what they were doing when it came to smuggling, but there was nothing they didn't know about ships. Dean kept them around mostly because he feared what kind of trouble they would get themselves into if left to their own devices. 

Krissy Chambers staggered up from below decks, dragging two full buckets behind her with her skinny teenage arms. She offered each of the sailors who came to her a ration of water. Krissy's father had been a small-time smuggler up in New England before his ship went down a year or two back on a job. Her father dead, her birthright at the bottom of the sea, Krissy had been left destitute. Dean had done his best to get her to what family she had left on the mainland. But she'd insisted that she would keep sailing one way or another, so Dean gave her a bunk and let her stay on the Impala. She made a hard-working cabin girl. One day, he was sure she would make a fine captain of her own vessel. 

And among all of them walked Anna. Graceful, unhurried, her blood-red hair flapping like a flag, and her legs accommodating the sway of the deck as if she were a part of the waves beneath. She weaved through the sailors, laying a hand on a shoulder here, speaking a word there, and where she went the people worked harder and faster than before. She read the deck and the crew the way a mechanic read her machine. She nudged it where it was slow and repaired it where it was broken, and where it was running smoothly she urged it along to even greater efficiency. Dean loved his crew, but of the two of them Anna was the true leader. 

And she had been born under the sea, with an ocean creature's body where her legs were now. She had grown up among merfolk. Followed their orders, led their garrison. A captain of the army of monsters that sailors liked to tell each other stories about. 

She turned toward Dean. Her fiery hair whipped across her face in a great tangle, and she gave him a smile as she brushed it away from her eyes. He raised two fingers in a tiny wave, and smiled back. 

Whatever she had been before, she'd turned away from it. She'd chosen a human body and a human life, and she'd chosen to spend at least part of it with Dean. 

Everyone on the Impala had come from somewhere, and ended up here. And Anna was no different. 

She was crew. 

She was family. 

When the day was done and the night watch was posted, Dean met her in her cabin. It was even more cramped than his, barely big enough for the hammock that was strung up against one wall and the chest of drawers shoved up against the other. But it was more than most first mates got on a ship this size. And besides, Dean would have given her the bigger room if she'd asked for it. 

She was curled up in her hammock, swaying gently with the rocking of the ship. When he entered she looked up with a smile. "Your bed is more comfortable," she pointed out. 

"You want your brother to watch?" scoffed Dean. 

She did not. So they made do with the space they had. It took them no more than a minute to determine that fucking in the hammock was utterly awkward and uncomfortable, so Dean stood up and hoisted Anna's legs up over his hips to screw her against the wall. 

"We should use my room more often," said Anna in his ear, her voice low and breathy with pleasure as Dean thrust deep and slow into her. "It's forcing you to get creative." 

"You saying I'm not creative all the time?" Dean replied. His voice was even rougher than Anna's. He'd missed this. It wasn't even the sex so much as just being close to her with her breath in his ear, her lips on his neck, her firm breasts pressed up against his chest, her soft curls of her hair licking his arms, and no secrets in between them. Fewer secrets than ever before, in fact. 

She gave a soft laugh that turned into a moan halfway through. "Admit it," she said. "You usually just let me be creative for you." Her hand slid down his back to give one of his cheeks a sharp squeeze. 

"You'd better be ready to put your money where your mouth is," Dean growled. 

Anna just laughed again. "Get me there first," she ordered him, "and then I'll have some fun with you." 

That was enough to spur him on to a faster pace. He fucked her until they were both panting, kissing clumsily as sweat slicked the places where their skin rubbed together at thighs and chests. But every time Dean found himself at the edge of his own orgasm, he opened his eyes to find Anna smirking back at him smugly, and he had to slow down with a frustrated whimper. Finally he gave in and lowered her back to the floor. As his cock slid out of her, condom still tight around its girth, he replaced it with three of his fingers and fell to his knees to suck her swollen clit. 

Anna moaned her approval, twining her fingers into Dean's hair and hooking a knee over his shoulder to draw him closer. Soon Dean felt her walls tighten around his fingers, once, twice, again and again, as she threw her head back and dug her fingernails into Dean's scalp in ecstasy. 

He smiled, slick from nose to chin, and looked up at her expectantly. She didn't even take a moment to catch her breath, but dragged him upright by his hair and bent him over the dresser in the corner of the room. 

She pulled her toy out of the top drawer – a little wooden cock polished until it was mirror-smooth. She oiled it up and teased him with it, painting the slick lubrication up and down the cleft of his ass and massaging circles around the open and yielding hole there. Finally she eased it inside. It was small enough that Dean could take it without so much as a finger to open it up, so long as he relaxed and Anna went slow. Small, and not as warm and responsive as flesh, but she knew just how to use it to make Dean's knees go weak. Once it was in him she angled it in her hand so that he could feel the pressure of it on his cock from the inside, and when she fucked him with it he gripped the sides of the dresser, white-knuckled, and pressed his face against the wood to stifle a whimper. 

He didn't last long, primed as he was by the taste of her on his lips. She bent over him, sucking on his ear and reaching around to squeeze his erection where it hung, throbbing and aching, and he came with a groan and with a jerk of his body so violent that the dresser _thumped_ against the wall. 

He stayed upright long enough to stagger back into the hammock instead of slumping to the floor. Anna joined him a second later, licking her fingers clean. He had spent the weeks since leaving Stanford dreaming of this, of falling asleep with her curled up beside him, his body loose with pleasure, his hand in her hair and her soft breath on his neck. 

But once the haze of orgasm faded, he was left feeling strangely restless. It was too hot in Anna's room, or else too cold, or the hammock wasn't as comfortable as his own bed, but whatever it was he could not seem to fall asleep no matter which way he turned and no matter how divine Anna felt with her naked body twined around his. He had forgotten something important, and he couldn't think of what it was. 

Anna knew before he did. "You want to spend the night with Castiel," she said suddenly. Dean had thought she was asleep. 

He didn't bother denying it, but stammered, "It's not like that."

"I didn't say it was," said Anna, not bothering to lift her head from his shoulder. 

"I want to stay with you," he said. It was not a lie. 

"But you know I'll be fine on my own," she finished for him. "And you worry about Castiel."

He could hardly be blamed for that. The last time he'd left Cas alone for a night to share someone else's bed, one of his own crew had tried to murder Cas in the night. But he still hesitated to stir from the hammock and Anna's arms. "Tonight was really, really good," he said, feeling as silly even as he said it. "If I go, I don't want you to think it's because you..."

Anna tipped the hammock and gave Dean a shove so that he was forced to put his feet down on the floor or fall. "Go to him," she ordered, smiling, "so I can get some sleep!"

"Have I told you that I love you?" said Dean. 

"Not nearly often enough." 

So Dean kissed her forehead and told her a few more times before he gathered up his clothes and left. 

His own room was dark and still when he returned to it. The surface of the water in the basin was as flat and calm as a mirror. Dean dipped his hand into it as he clambered over to his bed and brushed his fingers over a shoulder blade. 

Cas rose with a quiet swishing of water. "Good evening, Dean," he said sleepily. 

"Didn't mean to wake you," Dean sighed as he leaned back and made himself comfortable. "Just didn't want to surprise you is all." He didn't admit, even to himself, that maybe he had wanted to see Cas's face before slinking off to sleep. 

"I don't mind," said Cas, stifling a yawn. He started to recede back into his basin. 

Dean stopped him with a stammered, "I, uh, guess the water's cold enough for you now."

"Yes." Neither of them mentioned that the water had been plenty cold for quite some time now, that Cas was quite comfortable in it, nor that there was really no reason for Cas to sleep with his head propped up on Dean's bed and his hand gripping Dean's ankle as he'd been doing for the last weeks. But there was no denying it now. 

Dean cleared his throat. "We're not far from home. I said I'd get you back there, didn't I?" 

"Yes, you did." Cas's voice could not have been any less readable. 

"Well, good night then." Dean rolled over and closed his eyes. A second later, he heard the soft _splish_ of Cas disappearing below the surface of the water again. And dammit, he should have stayed with Anna, because now he was alone in his bed and his heart was aching and his ankle missed the weight of Cas's hand. 

A drop of cold water fell on Dean's calf. He flinched and sat up. A single tentacle – purplish, almost black in the low light, each sucker outlined in moonglow – was feeling its way up the side of Dean's bed and onto the mattress. It groped blindly among the blankets until it touched Dean's foot. Then, gently, it wrapped itself around Dean's ankle and pulled until Dean's leg flopped over the edge of the bed, his foot in the basin of water. The tentacle gave his ankle a squeeze, then fell still. 

Dean drifted off to sleep with a smile on his face. 

\-----

When they'd left Stanford, the trip to Cuba and back had seemed an impossibly long time to keep a merman hidden in Dean's cabin. Now the weeks had dwindled to days, and each hour brought them closer to the time when Dean would have to say goodbye to his strange friend. He found himself squinting up at his full, taut sails and wishing that the wind would die down. 

When they were two days from home, Dean sat up until the early hours of the morning in order to finish reading Frankenstein to Cas. He'd tried to read a chapter each night since they'd begun, but he'd fallen behind and it was not as if he could give Cas the book to take with him when he went. Cas sat with his elbows propped on Dean's bed, enraptured by the words, and Dean stole glances at him over the top of the pages. The childlike wonder in his eyes made Dean smile. 

But when he read the last line, "He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance," and closed the book, neither of them were smiling. 

"It was a sad story, after all," said Cas wistfully. 

"What did you expect?" Dean stretched out on his bed. He tried not to think about the fact that he needed to be up for his next shift in less than an hour. 

"I expected it to be sad," Cas admitted. "Stories about monsters often are."

The day spun by too quickly. The night before they reached Stanford, Dean wondered if he shouldn't just get it over with. 

"You could leave tonight, you know," he blurted out just before Cas settled down into his water to sleep. 

Cas just looked at him, his head tilting slightly to the side. 

"I could sneak you out on deck when the watch changes. We're close to the coast now. It's shallow enough for you. You could swim the rest of the way home. Like you wanted to before. I know you hate it here." 

After a long pause, Cas simply said, "I can wait. One more night is nothing." He slipped below the surface of the water, pulling Dean's foot in after him with a tentacle around his ankle. 

Dean had to agree. One more night was nothing. 

The sun was going down on the next day when they cut a wide berth around the docks at Stanford and dropped anchor in their little cove. The crew took to the shore and scattered, each to his or her own comfort or diversion of choice. Food, drink, entertainment, good company, a warm bed and someone to share it – all this awaited them, and Dean too, if he cared to pursue it. But all he wanted was one more night at sea. And one more. And one more. 

When the crew were all gone, he opened the door to his cabin. "It's time," he said. 

Cas climbed out of his basin and made his slow way across the floor. He met Dean and Anna out on the deck. They were the only ones in the entire cove. 

Anna touched Dean's arm. "Didn't you ever wonder what I was always doing here alone when you were off at Stanford and the others were off in the city?" 

He had always wondered, but now he grinned and said, "I think I've figured it out."

"Let me show you," said Anna. She went to the edge of the deck, stripping off her clothes as she went, and tipped herself over the railing. Dean and Cas hurried over to watch her fall. In the air, her legs crossed and then twisted, melting together like molasses and growing longer, thicker, changing color... and then she was gone in a splash of dusk-lit water before Dean could see what sort of shape she would take. 

She bounced to the surface again almost immediately and waved up at Dean and Cas where they stood on the deck. As she swam lazy laps around the ship, Dean saw her outline just under the surface of the water. Her lower body was a plump, strong tail dappled in gray fur and ending in a funny set of flippers like the fronds of a plant. A harbor seal. 

"She's beautiful," he murmured to Cas. 

His only answer was the loud splash of a body hitting the water. He turned to find that he was alone on deck; Cas had jumped when he wasn't looking. He looked down at the spot where Cas had disappeared into the water, where the bubbles were still rising from the impact. He waited. Cas would come back up, surely, to say goodbye. 

But the bubbles dispersed and the ripples were smoothed out by the waves, and Cas didn't come back up. Dean watched and watched, and with each minute that passed he felt a little hollower inside. 

Cas was gone.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Jess get hitched.

When Castiel hit the water, it was a moment of pure and utter bliss. The crisp coolness of it, the sharp salinity, the familiar currents and eddies tugging at him, the taste of particles in the water on his lips and at the tips of his tentacles, and when he touched the bottom even the fuzzy clumps of green on the rocks and the patches of sea grass sprouting up between them – everything was as familiar as his own skin. He stretched his tentacles out to their full length and filled his mantle with sweet salt water. When he pumped it over his gills, it felt better than a breath of fresh air ever could. Too long he had been confined, breathing dry air and tepid southern water. But now he was home.

He looked up for only a moment. The sunlight on the surface made the barrier between water and air into a rippling metallic ceiling, broken only by the white caps of the waves and by the great dark hull of the Impala. Above, he could barely make out the shape of the prow as it continued up into the air, and he thought he could even see the faintest smudge of color that might have been a face leaning over the rail. 

He turned away, back to the greens and blues of the waterscape around him. He'd let himself get too comfortable, too happy, aboard the Impala. Dean's friendship had crept up on him, like getting caught in a deepwater current, not realizing how far out to sea you are until you're trying to claw your way back. 

The cold, rich swirls of the open ocean led Castiel to the opening of the bay like a road. But just before he broke through into deeper waters, a flash of sleek fur and a spray of bubbles caught his eye up above. A seal's tail was flipping idly in the surf. 

Castiel climbed up to where Anna sat on a mossy rock, her hair clinging wetly to her shoulders and breasts. The fin of her tail dipped in and out of the water. Only Castiel's head and shoulders pushed up above the waves. They regarded each other silently until Anna lifted her hands and said, "Are you going to tell the others that you found me?" 

The mer-people all had lungs to breathe and speak, but they were no use under water. Their native language was one of signs, body movement, and facial expression. Anna used that language alongside her spoken words, her hands forming the sentence so fluently that Castiel could almost forget that it had been years and years since she'd last used the signs.

"I have to, Anna," Castiel replied. He signed without speaking. Before Anna's name, out of habit, he touched two fingers to his temple in a sign of respect for his captain. A second later, he frowned and repeated the sign for her name, this time without the salute. 

Anna sighed and said, "The only thing you have to do is what you think is right." Then she allowed herself a wan smile. "It was good to see you again. You'll be back, won't you?" 

"Why would I be back?" Castiel signed, his frown deepening. 

"To visit me," she said. "And Dean, of course." She touched her temple as she said Dean's name. 

"Why would I need to visit... that one?" He stumbled over the sign for Dean's name, almost touching his temple and then stuttering over something like the sign for "friend" before settling on the most impersonal pronoun he could think of. 

Anna laughed, shook her head, and said, "Have a safe journey home, Cas."

He was about to retreat back into the water, but then he stopped and narrowed his eyes. "You called me Cas," he said aloud.

"It's what you like to be called," said Anna.

"It's what Dean calls me."

Anna shrugged and didn't answer. 

Castiel dropped below the surface and jetted farther out to sea. 

\-----

Even with the window open, Dean's cabin seemed stuffier than usual. Dean wasn't sure if it was Sam's imminent marriage that made his short of breath, or the damn clothes.

He tugged at his collar, trying to gain himself some breathing room. Anna smoothed his tie back into place and then knelt to help him lace up his boots. When she'd found out that Dean had planned to go to Sam's wedding in the same stained and salt-crusted clothes that he'd worn for weeks on deck, she'd forced him to dig his nicest breeches, shirt, and waistcoat out of the chest in his room. She'd even made him wash them before putting them on. His father had been alive the last time he'd worn these clothes, and the shirt was uncomfortably tight in the shoulders and neck. 

"The only things I'm wearing that fit are my boots," he grumbled as Anna yanked the laces into a bow. They were the same boots he always wore, though Anna had scrubbed and shined them until they looked almost passable. 

"You look good," she assured him. "No one will mistake you for fashionable, but you won't embarrass Jessica either." 

Dean didn't think anything could make Jess less excited about her wedding day, let alone a best man who felt slightly cramped in his old-fashioned clothes. As soon as Dean had dragged himself into town the day after dropping anchor, she'd launched herself into a flurry of planning and arrangements. In a matter of days, the makings of a wedding had materialized with alarming speed. Dean had assumed that he would have a few weeks to relax before having to worry about Sam getting hitched, but Jess seemed determined to make it happen before Dean had a chance to slip away again. 

"What did you expect?" Sam had said. "She's been planning it for months. She was just waiting for you to come back so she could put it all into action." He shrugged and smiled at his fiancée's fervor, but Dean could tell that he was just as eager as Jess. He could see it in the easy way they touched, their quick kisses as one passed by the other, and the way their bodies fit together when they were standing side by side, Jess leaning on Sam's arm. They were married already. They just wanted to make it official. 

Dean stared down at the top of Anna's head as she finished tucking the hems of his trousers into his boots. She stood slowly, primping and smoothing as she went, and finished by straightening Dean's tie one last time. Her hands worked over his body with the same fond familiarity as Jess's hands when they rested on Sam's arm. 

"You ever think about getting married?" Dean blurted out.

"No." Anna answered immediately and dispassionately, as if Dean had just asked her about the weather. 

Dean couldn't help but push his luck. "Not even to me?" he said with a weak laugh. 

Anna did not return his smile. "Dean, we've talked about this," she said gently.

"I know," Dean sighed. "It's just on my mind."

Anna ran her fingers through Dean's hair and tucked a flyaway strand behind his ear. "It's not for us, sweetie," she said. "We're not that kind of people. This isn't that kind of relationship."

"What, just because I like you to smack me around doesn't mean..."

"That's not what I'm talking about." She stared him down. She was right. They had had this conversation before. And before, Dean had been content with her answer. But something had changed. Maybe it was all the talk of marriage, but ever since they'd arrived back in Stanford Dean's bed had felt empty. Even when Anna was sleeping beside him, he lay awake and dangled his leg over the side of the bed, his toes brushing the floor where the basin used to stand. 

"I love you," he said, his voice sounding desperate even to his own ears. 

"I love you, too," said Anna. "You know that. But Dean, I don't want to marry you." She leaned in to give him a chaste kiss and whisper in his ear, "And l I'll tell you a secret. You don't want to marry me, either."

She started to walk out of his cabin. He called after her, "Are you sure you won't at least be my date?" His heart hurt, but his smile was real. He couldn't fault her for speaking her mind. 

"People might overlook your extreme resemblance to yourself when you visit Stanford on your own," she said, pausing at the door to smile back at him. "But with me beside you we'd look just like our wanted posters. You're on your own today. Give Sam my love."

Alone, he rowed to shore and made the walk into the little town. A bit of sweat and dust from the road made his clothes even less presentable, but that didn't stop Sam from embracing him when he arrived. 

"I'm glad you're here," said Sam. "If you'd tried to skip town this time Jess might have actually had to kill you." 

"I wouldn't miss it," said Dean, trying to hide his emotion behind a too-hard slap on Sam's back. Sam looked great. His clothes were newer and better-fitting than Dean's, and his hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon. 

It seemed that most of the town had turned out to see Sam and Jess get married. The little church was packed full as any Sunday (not that Dean would know what the inside of a church looked like on Sunday). The people who lined the pews wore carefree smiles and nicer clothes than Dean's. Dean would have felt more at home lurking in the corner near the door where no one could see him, but instead he was expected to stand up beside Sam in full view of the congregation. 

Jess was his saving grace. As soon as she entered in her pale blue confection of a dress, not a single eye was on Dean. Least of all Sam's. The poor guy looked like he'd just taken an arrow through the chest. But as his bride joined him on the dais she gave him a little nudge in the ribs with her elbow, and his stunned gaping turned to a sheepish smile. She returned the smile through her gauzy veil. Soon both their smiles grew into a shared conspiratorial giggle, as if neither of them could quite believe that they were standing there, about to finally say the words. 

For a while, Dean managed to forget his self-consciousness and even the pinch of his too-tight clothes. He let the priest's pious droning become background noise and enjoyed the perfect happiness on his brother's face. Dean had a feeling they weren't listening to the sermon either. 

He started paying attention again just in time to hear the priest saying, "... love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health? And forsaking all others, keep only to her as long as you both shall live?"

Sam was still staring at Jess with a goofy look on his face. Dean had to kick the side of his shoe before he remembered to say, "I do." 

Their vows they said together: "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part."

They kissed, and Dean had to resist the urge to slap Sam on the back in the middle of it. He was just so goddamn proud. He did reach out to put his hand on Sam's shoulder as the ceremony drew to an end, but Sam was already walking away from the altar arm-in-arm with Jess, and Dean's fingertips grazed the back of his jacket as they fell through empty air. 

The celebration that evening was much less the raucous party that Dean might have planned. Instead, they dined at Jess's parents' house. The long table was full of a dozen or so of Jess's aunts, uncles, cousins, and close family friends. The only one there representing Sam's family was Dean. 

"Hey," Sam muttered as they sat down. "I know this isn't your style, but I'm really glad you're here. It means a lot."

"Wouldn't have missed it," Dean muttered back. "But tomorrow night I'm dragging you to the Impala, getting you drunk with the whole crew, and embarrassing the shit out of you with stories from when you were a kid until we both pass out." 

"Deal," said Sam. But then he turned to give Jess a kiss, and spent the rest of dinner talking to her brother and uncle about politics so local and so uninvolved with piracy laws that Dean could barely keep up, let alone participate. 

Dean tried to chat up Jess instead, but she gave him a regretful grimace and a mouthed, "Sorry," as she continued to have her time monopolized by a couple of aunts who were aggressively giving her advice about her new married life. The only other people present that Dean recognized were Jess's parents, and even if they had approved of Dean (which they didn't) they were too far down the table to gracefully converse with. Dean was left staring at his napkin and trying to remember the last time he'd actually used one for its intended purpose. 

He drained his wine glass in one gulp, refilled it, and drained it again. 

The more he drank, the more the hostile roar of conversation faded into an irritating buzz. Even Jess's voice. Even Sam's. They were a part of this family, this world, and whenever Dean stopped here long enough he was always reminded of the fact that he would never belong. 

He took another drink. 

The pretty blonde sitting across from him reached over and refilled his glass for him, smiling and making some kind of joke about slowing down. Dean didn't hear her. His skin was getting warm and his mind sluggish. 

This was what he'd raised Sam for. This is what he'd always had in mind for him. A smart, pretty, loving wife. A big, stable family. A long and happy life in peace. All the things their father had never tried or even thought to provide for either of them. But now, watching Sam rub shoulders with a host of strangers, he couldn't help but sneer into his next glass of wine as he lifted it to his lips. Jess was wonderful, brilliant, brave and beautiful, and after years of getting to know her Dean could only just stomach the thought of Sam belonging to her. But her family? What had they ever done to deserve someone like Sam?

Had they ever taken a punch for him? A spray of cannon shrapnel? A bullet? 

Had they ever covered for him when he fell asleep on all-night watch? 

Had they been the ones to read him stories by the light of the guttering candle stubs scrounged from their father's cabin? And then, when the candles ran out, by the light of the moon? Eyes straining to finish just one more chapter, and then another, until he finally fell asleep? 

Had they fretted over him when he was sick? Searched for him when he was missing? Ransomed him when he crossed the path of a rival crew? 

Had they ever seen him smile and died a little inside, because he was perfect and the world was cruel, and all they could do to protect that smile was throw themselves between him and the worst parts of the world, no matter the cost to their own hearts? 

Dean had poured out all of his love and devotion and blood into making Sam the extraordinary young man that he was. And now Sam, full of life and promise, was forging ahead. And there was Dean still, alone and used-up, having saved none of his love for himself. 

Dean slammed his wine glass back onto the table. The stem broke with a shrill snap. Wine sloshed onto the tablecloth. 

"SHIT," he said, too loudly. 

The hum of conversation stammered to a halt as everyone stopped to stare at Dean, who was awkwardly trying to scoot his plate forward to hide the spreading wine stain. 

"Dean?" said Sam, his eyebrows furrowing as he recognized the signs of debilitating drunkenness on his brother's face. 

Jess's father cleared his throat and stared down the table as if the red spot on his white tablecloth had just confirmed everything he ever suspected about Dean. "Do you finally have something to say, then? You've been awfully quiet, considering your brother was married today. Why don't you stand up and tell us what's on your mind?" 

Den stood up so hard that his chair clattered onto its back behind him. And he would have told everyone exactly what was on his mind. 

But then he caught sight of Jess. She was staring at him. Not with confusion or trepidation like so many at the table, but with a wide, steady eyes that told Dean that if he embarrassed her on her wedding day she would burn him to the fucking ground. 

"I gotta go," he muttered, and almost tripped over his fallen chair on his way out the door. 

He didn't hear if anyone called after him. He just ran, taking the shortest cut through town and disappearing onto the roads through the trees where he didn't feel so many eyes on him. His waistcoat was gone; he didn't remember taking it off. He undid the first few buttons of his shirt, but he still couldn't breathe. He took the familiar road and its familiar turn-off onto the narrower paths and tracks. He never stopped running. 

Branches whipped his face and he slid on mossy rocks. His breath came harsh and shallow. But finally the downward-sloping path yielded from pebbles and dirt to soft sand. The trees opened up onto a narrow beach. Moonlight glowed through the hazy clouds and between the masts of the Impala anchored in her little cove. And when the toes of his boots touched surf, Dean finally stopped. He put his hands on his knees and tried to breathe deep enough to make his lungs stop burning. 

Dean had always known what he'd wanted for Sam. He'd aimed his brother like an arrow at a normal life and now he stood quivering in the bulls-eye. So, then, what did Dean want for himself? For a long time he might have said, "Nothing," but that wasn't true anymore. He hadn't just run away from Jess and her family, not really. He'd just run toward something unlike anything else he'd ever had cause to pursue. 

Not the Impala, swaying out on the water. Nor Anna nor the crew aboard her. Nor even the freedom she represented. Dean's eyes slipped off the ship and out toward the horizon, and the deeper waters there. 

He didn't notice that he'd kicked his shoes off until he felt the water around his ankles, and he didn't notice that he was walking forward until he felt the cold on his thighs. But he kept wading, staggering, the moon swimming in his unfocused vision. 

"CAS?" he called out, once, his voice still hoarse from running. 

And then he tripped on a rock and fell face-first into the surf. 

He only had to spend a moment trying to flail his way back upright before something gripped the collar of his shirt and dragged him back onto the sand. When Dean looked up, coughing, Sam's expression almost made him want to dive back into the cove. 

"What the hell are you doing?" Sam gasped, his voice almost as raspy as Dean's. 

"Did you run after me?" 

"What to do you think, Dean?" 

Dean spat out a mouthful of seawater, took a moment to wrap his brain around that, and then turned back to Sam full of horror. "Oh god," he said. "Jess is gonna murder both of us." 

Sam looked ready to snap something sarcastic, but he paused and then said, "Yeah, that's true." 

"You should have just stayed, man." 

"And let you drown yourself in like three feet of water? That would have been a really pathetic end to two of the great pirate bloodlines."

"I wasn't drowning myself," said Dean sullenly. "I was... oh fuck..." He turned his head away just in time to vomit what felt like his entire stomach. When he was sure it was over, he flopped backwards into the sand. "I think I'm dying."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You're not dying. You just drank like a gallon of wine and then sprinted three miles. You complete ass." 

"Sorry." 

"Whatever."

They sat in silence for a while. Sam watched the moon rise. Dean rolled over on his side and tried swallow his dry-heaves. 

Finally, Sam said, "I'm not going anywhere, you know."

"I know," Dean groaned. He would have thrown up some more, but he didn't think he had anything left to get out. 

"Really, this is even less of a change than when I left the Impala. It's not a big deal." 

"I know." 

Sam rested a hand on Dean's shoulder and rolled him over far enough to see his face. "And it's not like this can't ever happen for you too, you know?" 

Dean snorted through his nose. "Oh yeah? You mean I still have a shot with Jess?"

"Don't be a smart ass." Sam rolled Dean back over, planting his face in the sand. "I mean you could meet someone. Not like Jess, I know that's not the kind of life you want. But someone." 

Dean shook the sand off his face and sat up beside Sam. "Not likely. Unless there's someone out there who doesn't mind only seeing me every other month because I'm always off running Crowley's errands." 

"But one day. When the debt's paid off..." 

"Don't you get it yet?" Dean snapped. "I'm never gonna pay this debt off. Never. I've been breaking my back, risking my life for years, and I've barely made a dent in it. You wanna talk about what'll happen 'one day?' One day, I'll die on one of these runs. And then Crowley will come after you. Do you hear me? I'm buying you as much time as I can, but Dad dug us this grave and neither of us are ever getting out of it." 

Sam pressed his lips together and turned a shade paler. 

Dean looked out to sea and muttered, "Just don't ever have kids, okay? Or Crowley will own them too."

"Dean?"

"What?"

When he turned and saw Sam's face, his heart sank into his guts. He knew before the words left Sam's mouth. 

"Jess is pregnant." 

\-----

"He's _gone?_ " 

Sam looked about a foot shorter than he actually was, he was so sheepish in the face of her anger. "He needed to leave for his next job," he said. 

Jess crossed her arms. "What he needed to do was come back and apologize to me." 

"I know it's not easy to understand," Sam sighed. "This has been really hard on Dean. He's not just a brother to me, you know, he..."

"He raised you, yes, I know," Jess snapped. "It wouldn't have been any more acceptable if your father had gotten drunk and stormed out in the middle of dinner at our wedding, either." 

Jess had tried to like Dean. Jess _did_ like Dean. But not every fiancé – well, now husband – came with his baggage in the shape of a career criminal brother with emotional dependency issues. She'd married Sam anyway, knowing that it meant a lifetime of Dean's nonsense. But she'd be damned if she was going to smile and look the other way every time he stepped out of line. She'd shown him nothing but consideration and respect, and she expected the same in return. However hard it was on him to see Sam get married and however awkward it was to sit at a table with Jess and her family, he'd owed it to her to hold it together for a single evening. 

Sam nodded. "All I can say is that he's trying."

"And all I can say that the next time he shows his face around here he'd better be on his hands and knees, begging me to forgive him."

"Will you just take the note?" Sam had been holding out a creased envelope since this argument had started, and now he pushed it forward again. 

Jess stared at it. "What does it say?"

"I don't know. I didn't open it."

Jess snatched the letter out of Sam hand with a growl of frustration, stomped to her room, and slammed the door behind her. Sam knew better than to follow her. 

She ripped the envelope open. Inside was a tiny scrap of paper, folded in half. Far short of the elaborate apology she'd expected, it bore two words. 

"Sorry, sis"

A lit candle stood on her desk. With a scoff, she almost touched the paper to the flame. But just as the corner of the note began to brown, she pulled away. Instead, she re-folded the note and tucked it into the smallest desk drawer, up against the inside of the handle so she'd know where to find it. 

It was a start.


End file.
